


Rise

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Lovecraft Fusion, Animal Abuse (mentioned), Fluff and Crack, M/M, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Tentacle Monsters, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, animal death (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 02:50:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6138775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guys, no.  It has nothing to do with Hydra.  Well, maybe a little.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my 2015 Halloween theme - this one is for the Elder Gods square.

"All right, everyone," Steve says as the old iron door swings open. "Stick close."

The triple-barred door opens onto a cavernous chamber lit here and there by fissures in the arched ceiling: wide holes that gape on luminous clouds and tall cliff walls. The flood lights of the compound at the mouth of the bay and the great lantern of the lighthouse on the rocks above spill a flickering glow through the cracks in the ancient stones, just enough to give the darkness depth. The steady pulse of the tide is a muffled hiss and hum within the chambers' thick walls, overlaid by the hollow moan of the wind and the far-off patter of water on stone.

"Hey, Stark," Barton says in a hushed voice, almost too soft; instead of echoing his words, the vast chamber eats them. "So those flares you keep deploying...."

"I'm not roadside assistance, Robin Hood," Tony gripes, but he holds out his right hand, the repulsor disc in the palm of his suit's gauntlet lighting up the crumbling stairs leading down into the dark. Gooseflesh prickles the back of Steve's neck. That light must be giving away their position to everything in range, but he can't see how they're supposed to navigate these slick stairs without it. He's not sure how well Tony's going to do _with_ the aid of his high tech flashlight; the stone stairs are narrow, and his suit's boots are comparatively huge.

"I brought a flare gun," Natasha says, "if you don't mind advertising our arrival."

"Uh...or I could just turn on the lights," Bucky offers uncertainly from the back of the pack.

Steve casts a worried look over his shoulder just in time to see Bucky finch away with a scowl as Tony shines his hand right in Bucky's face. "Lights?" Steve asks, smacking at Stark's arm. Tony's already lowering it, grimacing sheepishly.

"Yeah, they're right--hold on." Shaking his head, Bucky squeezes around Clint and Natasha and between Tony and Steve, making sure to flick Tony right between the eyes as he passes.

"Hey, that was an accident!" Tony protests. "I thought you were supposed to be up at the lighthouse with Bruce and Wilson."

"He was," Steve grumbles as Bucky nimbly descends, his footsteps near-silent and too quick. "And be careful!"

"Lighten up, Steve," Bucky calls up to him. He already sounds much further away than he should be, but that may be a trick of the acoustics. "I told you I remembered this place."

"I know, but...I didn't realize you remembered this much." 'I remember' covers a lot of ground with Bucky these days, from dim flickers to exhaustive, encyclopedic detail.

Bucky doesn't remind him that Steve hadn't _asked_. As far back as the Commandos, Bucky's always been careful about questioning Steve's orders in front of the others, and some things haven't changed. It doesn't keep him from just showing up when he's supposed to be elsewhere, but not much does. To be fair, Steve's got his own reasons for wishing Bucky had listened, just this once.

"So, wait," Tony says, his frown scrawled in strange shadows by the glow of his palm. "If you know this place so well--"

In the instant the lights come on, the walls seem to shift, rushing toward them from unimaginable distances to leap soundlessly into place. The chamber's still huge, large enough for Tony to fly in, but the half-seen image burned into Steve's brain is of a world inverted, a vault of stone wide enough to mimic the heavens and a never-ending staircase spiraling down into a bottomless well that could swallow an ocean.

Lit by the sparking glare of bare, hanging bulbs, the watery reflection in the middle of the room turns out to be a puddle of rainwater, barely an inch deep. He can see now that the chamber isn't a simple box with a single door; archways dot the walls, opening onto dark hallways that lead off in all directions. Clearing this facility is going to be a nightmare, one he wishes Bucky wasn't here for. He knows the name of this ruined fortress from Bucky's file, and he's already half afraid of what they'll find.

"If I know this place so well what?" Bucky asks from the bottom of the stairs. He's still got his hand on an antique switch that looks like it should be hooked up to a mad scientist's project. The lights hanging from rusty metal tubing are probably older than all of them, bulbs flickering from warm amber to brown as they buzz and sputter.

"You wouldn't happen to recall any stories of Hydra keeping its mascot down here, would you?" Stark asks, peering into the shadows as he lets his hand drop.

"What, you mean like an actual hydra?" A grin tugs at the corner of Bucky's mouth. "Did one of the guards over at the compound see a monster?"

Steve shrugs. "As a matter of fact, yes. If it turns out Hydra's been experimenting on the local wildlife...."

Bucky snorts and shakes his head. "Those idiots know they shouldn't be down here. Now they've got themselves all worked up over nothing."

Steve trades a glance with Tony as Bucky ambles away from them, heading for the nearest archway. He looks more relaxed than Steve has seen him yet outside the relative safety of the tower. "Uh, Buck? When were you here last, exactly?"

"Well, I'm not exactly clear on the dates. This is where the Russians brought me after they found me on that mountain," Bucky says, shoulders tightening as he casts a glance over his shoulder that doesn't meet anyone's eyes. "I guess I was here for...I dunno, a few years? I don't remember much of it until after I got the arm."

Until after the torture and the brainwashing finally started to take, he means. Steve remembers that from Bucky's file as well: vague hints regarding unusual measures unique to this facility required to break Bucky's mind for reconditioning, followed by the implantation of the arm as a reward. Their attempt at positive reinforcement hadn't succeeded very well; Bucky had tried to kill the first doctors he saw while he was still too woozy to walk.

"Things might have changed since then," Natasha points out carefully, watching Bucky with a thoughtful frown.

"Maybe up there," Bucky allows with a shrug, half turning back from the archway he'd been about to investigate, "but down here's a different story. If they made it deep enough in to run into--"

"Barnes, look out!" Clint yells, nocking an arrow as Bucky spins around. Steve lifts his shield, straining to see what Clint's sharp eyes have picked out in the shadows as Stark takes to the air on his left. Natasha moves up to take Stark's place, glancing over the edge of the crumbling stairs to gauge the drop, a gun in each hand.

The darkness down the corridor ripples as something makes its way closer. It's huge, filling the hall with its bulk, its footsteps eerily silent. A score of long necks curl and writhe as it slinks towards the light--towards Bucky, who cocks his head to the left and watches it come.

"Buck, what are you--?"

"Charlie? What are you doing up?" Bucky calls to the thing before Steve can add his own warning to Clint's. "Can't sleep?"

The thing...hums. Or roars. The sound booms against the walls and hisses like the last gasp of air forced from cramped lungs. There are no words in the cacophony--melody?--that Steve can distinguish, yet even before Bucky huffs a near-silent laugh, he knows Bucky is being answered.

"You don't have to tell _me_ ," Bucky says, amused. "Rude bastards. So how many did you eat this time?"

From a distance, in the dark, Steve can see how the mistake would be easy to make, but as the creature's slick limbs explode out of the archway in a writhing mass that fills the entrance completely, Steve realizes they aren't necks; they're arms: thick, black tentacles that look wet though they leave no mark where they touch. A dozen, two dozen--it's impossible to tell as they coil around each other and sometimes through, their edges melting and reforming. Looking at them directly makes Steve's eyes hurt, but Bucky doesn't seem to have any problem; he doesn't move away even when the creature's inky limbs sprawl around his feet. They don't touch him, but they could snatch him up in an instant, too close for even Bucky to avoid.

"What the fuck, Barnes?" Tony blurts, bobbing a little in the air as distraction gets the better of him. "When did you join the Cthulhu fan club?"

Bucky shakes his head. "You know, that's what Hydra called him, but c'mon. Does he look like a Cthulhu to you?"

"Is that a trick question?"

"Hey, I can't pronounce his real name either," Bucky admits with a shrug. "So I just started calling him Charlie."

'Charlie' gives a scratchy, clicking warble that makes Steve's eardrums want to tear themselves free to find a hiding place somewhere deep inside his skull.

"He doesn't mind," Bucky translates, grinning like a little kid.

Stark shakes his head hard, his right hand lifting to bang on the side of his helmet. Clint mutters something about turning his hearing aids off, but Natasha takes a few steps down the stairs, holstering her guns. "How did you and your friend here meet?" she asks, eyeing the creature speculatively.

Bucky glances back at the monster as if waiting for it to begin the story, shrugging again when it waves a few stray limbs at him. "I don't exactly remember that part. I got the feeling from some of the stuff they said later that I'd been making a royal pain in the ass of myself," he says with a smug little grin. It doesn't last. "They'd been trying to fuck with my head for while by then--I remember _that_ \--but...I guess it wasn't taking. So the head doc, he must've figured giving sensory deprivation a go was the next step, 'cause they tied me up, brought me down here, and left me."

Steve swallows hard, taking a tighter grip on his shield. Just looking at the creature wound around Bucky's feet makes his skin crawl, and it's obvious from the others' reactions that he's not alone. He doesn't honestly believe the thing is dangerous, at least not at the moment, but there's something so intrinsically _not right_ about the creature, he feels like his entire brain might just invert itself to avoid thinking about it too closely. That Bucky isn't cringing away--that Bucky seems desensitized to the creature's wrongness--worries him more than he'd like to admit.

"Well," Bucky says, a faint half-smile resurrecting as he tips his head toward the monster with a jerk. "Charlie's not a huge fan of clutter, and it must've been obvious I wasn't camped out on his doorstep for fun, so after about a week, I guess he just up and put me outside for pickup. It, uh...being down here in the dark must've gotten to me though, because I was...kind of not myself after that," he says, shamefaced. "I remember waking up in the chair, and bam! Clean slate, when it used to be pretty hit or miss."

To Steve's surprise, the creature reaches for Bucky then, winding a coil around his ankle that settles without pulling. Bucky laughs. "I know, buddy. Not your fault humans are nutty about getting stuck in the dark. Anyway, that's when things got weird."

"Oh, things _got_ weird?" Tony drawls, finally dropping down for a landing. "Well, this I've got to hear."

Bucky rolls his eyes, but Stark has rarely managed to get a rise out of him; mostly Bucky takes his ribbing in stride.

"Well, yeah. Because then they sent me down again, only under my own power. And Charlie was all, 'What the hell are you doing back?' And I said, 'Got me; have I been here before?' So Charlie pokes at me and says, 'Is it because you're missing things?' And I said, 'Well, I do kind of miss the arm.'" Charlie lifts another tentacle to nudge him in the side, and Bucky smacks at the thing, grinning, like he would if it were one of them. "Hey, I was pretty out of it, right? And Charlie wasn't too clear on how humans even work, so he was like, 'Sure, I can fix that.' And when he put me outside again, I had this."

Bucky gestures lightly with his left arm, and Steve's jaw drops. "But--your file says--"

"Alien tech," Bucky agrees, nodding animatedly. "Which, technically...?"

Stark makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan of pure frustration. "I'm not sure whether I feel better because I wasn't one-upped by a human, or whether I'm insulted because your friend there _doesn't have hands_ ," he mutters, flipping his visor up so Bucky can see exactly how tragic his grimace is.

Charlie...blows a raspberry. Hearing it makes Steve want to both weep and laugh uncontrollably, but thankfully the feeling soon passes.

"Yeah, well, the docs sort of went nuts when they saw it. And I maybe went nuts right after that, but the point is, they thought a shiny metal arm was a _great_ idea, so they sent a bunch of soldiers down hoping they'd come back enhanced. So Charlie ate them."

"Ate them?" Clint echoes. He looks like he's in the process of turning his hearing aids back on, but judging from the redness of his eyes, not being able to hear Charlie is no defense.

"Well, yeah. There's uninvited, and then there's being invaded, and that was just rude," Bucky says with a huff. Charlie throws a few more loops around Bucky's calves, winding like an affectionate cat. "Anyway, they sent me down a few more times after that--usually to see what had happened to the poor bastards they kept losing down here--until someone wrote Zola and he told them to knock it off, accept the boon, blah blah Great Cthulhu, and so on. Then they sent me on to Russia, and I haven't been back since."

The reminder is apparently too much for Charlie, who reaches out with a dozen tentacles to wrap Bucky up tight. Bucky pats the grabbing arms consolingly, even when several slide right _through_ him, as if hugging isn't hugging until major organs are involved.

"Hey, hey," he says with a laugh, "already occupying this space, buddy. And yeah, I missed you too."

"Jesus," Tony breathes. "What does that even feel like?"

Bucky tips his head thoughtfully to the side and eventually declares, "Squirmy."

Clint makes a choked sound like he's reconsidering breakfast. Steve sympathizes, but he can't just hang back and watch Bucky getting the stuffing hugged out of him--please God, not literally--by the same cosmic terror that likely scrambled his brain seventy years ago.

He makes it three steps down before Charlie trills, or coos, or _rattles_ , the tip of one tentacle tapping excitedly at Bucky's right knee.

"Uh...no?" Bucky replies with a perplexed frown. "We're just here to clean out that Hydra base up there. Wait, evolve into what? And what do you mean, 'spawn'?"

"Sorry, Cap," Clint says, voice strangled, "but you are on your own."

Stark fires up his boots then cuts power again. His wordless grumble as he lands is uncertain and put-upon and very, very torn. _Curious_. Natasha just hums. "That explains a few things." Steve is inexpressibly glad she's staring at Bucky's _face_.

He really hates to admit it, but she does have a point.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because we are apparently having a fabulous tentacle weekend, and various folks wanted to see what would happen if Charlie followed Bucky home. :3

Tony grins as he reads Bruce’s text-- _Be there in 20_ \--punching air just a little as he steps out of the elevator into the parking garage. He’s been arguing with Bruce--okay, wheedling shamelessly--for months about coming to live in the Tower, or just coming to _work_ in the Tower, because he knows once Bruce sees the lab lovingly handcrafted for him, he'll never want to leave. Tony had a bed installed in the back, just in case.

He'd known that Bruce was in New York--he's been making a point of being in New York himself, the better to keep the greatest hits of the 40's from haring off again--but this calls for a celebration. Like all the booze the rest of them can drink and a vat of that weird stick tea Bruce likes, just for him. Tony's even got time to nip over and grab some, far too pumped about the entire situation to just sit around and wait.

It's while he's gloating over that text, halfway to his cars, that he notices the connection bars on his phone mysteriously dropping away. That's...odd. If there's one parking garage in the world he should be able to find a signal in, it's his own.

He looks up and stops, eyes narrowed, as a dozen well-armed men melt out of the shadows. That really shouldn't be possible--JARVIS has the entire Tower under tight surveillance-- but he's learned not to get hung up on things like that. Worrying about the impossible just distracts him from getting himself out of whatever impossible situation he's in.

"Wow, fellas," he says with a tight smile, throwing out a hand and listening for the humming roar of his suit's thrusters, which should be arriving at any moment now. "You've got guts, I'll give you that. Showing up in Avengers' Tower?" _Any_ moment now. For Christ's sake, the suits are _right upstairs_.

"Don't bother, Stark." The man who steps forward is maybe Tony's age, his hair clipped only just slightly longer than stubble. Like the others, he's wearing civvies and not a uniform, his olive-drab jacket conceivably just long enough to have hidden the rifle held loosely across his chest. "Nothing's getting in or out while we're jamming communications, and that includes you."

Tony arches a brow. "And...you don't think that's going to set off any alarms?" Seriously, he gives it thirty seconds tops before JARVIS mentions to the others that someone _might_ want to go have a peek downstairs, assuming JARVIS can't see what's happening this very moment.

The spokesgoon smirks. "Not fast enough."

 _Shit_. This isn't a kidnapping. This is--

Tony twitches. Stares. Is that a--?

Spilling down out of the ceiling-- _literally out of the solid concrete ceiling_ \--black tentacles drop over the shoulders of Tony's assailants like an overturned box of snakes. The thugs shriek as heavy coils wind tight around them and lift them off their feet, pulling them up into the writhing mass of arms that loops Tony in a lopsided ring. One or two manage to keep hold of their guns and open fire; Tony hits the deck, but the tentacles absorb the bullets like a ballistics tank, taking each punch of gunfire and sealing over seamlessly.

Crouching on the garage floor, Tony lifts his arms away from his head and watches a thug's shoulders disappear, then his torso to his hips. The guy ought to be smacking up hard against concrete and rebar by now, maybe getting crushed to death against the solid surface of the ceiling, only the tentacles phasing through may actually be opening a portal...a good dozen portals, spread out over....

"Charlie?" he asks, uncertain. He hadn't thought the thing was this _big_ , but then, he never did get a chance to see it outside of its tunnels.

Charlie warbles at him, setting off five car alarms and causing a dozen hardened mercenaries to lose control of their bladders in unison. A spare tentacle drops down to give Tony a cheery wave.

Okay. Somebody's got some explaining to do.

As he comes charging out of the elevator, he finds Barnes and Rogers being obnoxiously domestic, just totally setting a bad example for everyone else's partners, really. They're completely unapologetic about it, too; Barnes just smirks at him sleepily from his sprawl on the couch, head pillowed on Rogers' thigh while Captain Perfect _pets his hair_. Honestly. If he tried that with Pepper, she'd--well, she'd probably pet his hair too. But not without feeling his forehead first.

Right. Priorities.

"Barnes!" he barks, or tries to, anyway. It's maybe more of a yelp. Definitely not a bleat. "Your tentacle monster followed you home, and now it's living in the garage!"

The drowsy contentment drops off Barnes' face at once, but he looks surprised at best as he sits up. "Oh. Uh, sorry? If he's taking up too much space, I can ask him to--"

"No! You don't get it--it's living _in_ the garage. Like, _in_...between...inside the...? It's _in the fucking ceiling_ , okay? In it! Inside! The ceiling itself!" He feels like he may have just used way too many exclamation points there, but he also feels it's warranted.

Rogers looks concerned, but he's staring at Barnes, not Tony. Tony guesses that's warranted too.

Barnes' brows shoot up over wide eyes. "Cool," he says, automatic as breathing.

"I know it's cool!" Tony yells, flailing just a little. Damn it, how did he not know that Cap's bestie is a closet geek? He'd have asked for a closer look at the-- _priorities_. "But what's it doing in the--oh, fuck. _Bruce_."

The others don't ask questions. When he sprints for the elevator, they dive in after him.

"Charlie, we talked about this!" Barnes shouts, a little too loudly for the close confines of the car.

"He's like ninety floors below!" Tony protests, still wincing.

Barnes shoots him a puzzled look. "So?"

When they pile out of the elevator, they find one car alarm still going off, half a rifle that looks like it was _bitten_ off, and the Hulk staring up at the ceiling with a bewildered smile, one big green hand clasping a lone tentacle offered to him for a shake.

"What," Tony says, shoulders slumping as panic flows out of him in a rush.

Rogers scratches his nose. "Maybe...the Hulk's brain already healed from...that?"

Bucky starts, face screwed up in confusion. "Healed from what?"

Tony drags his hands slowly down his face. Right. If Rogers wants to throw himself on that grenade, Tony's not going to stop him. He just wishes they'd gotten a straight answer out of Barnes as to what his friend there had meant by spawning and whether it means anything that Charlie has followed him _here_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm seriously just going to leave this marked complete, because at any point it's read, it could well be complete...buuuuut I'm probably going to keep adding to it as people keep prompting me, haha! [Tentacle Weekend](http://ciceqi.tumblr.com/post/140876729583/bored) turned into [Tentacle Week](http://ciceqi.tumblr.com/post/140988531013/still-not-done), and MountainRose requested: _Charlie learns to camouflage himself like a cuttlefish, "Tony, when did you get that sculpture? I think it’s…looking at me?"_ :3

Having Pepper home from Tokyo is an enormous relief. _And_ an enormous source of worry, because hello, tentacle monster living in the parking garage, only Tony sends a helicopter to the airport and Charlie doesn't come up to meet her, so everything's fine. Really. Except that Tony still doesn't know how he's going to explain the situation.

"So, what was the hurry?" Pepper asks, glancing back with a wry smile as he follows her into the penthouse. "I thought Happy was meeting me."

"Happy did meet you," Tony is quick to point out, stuffing his hands in his pockets while Pepper toes off her shoes. "In the helicopter."

She narrows her eyes at him, but she doesn't lose her smile. "Mm-hmm."

"Really, it's nothing! There was some craziness earlier in the week, but one of the Dadly Duo's friends took care of it, and everything's fine. Bruce is here now, even--did I mention Bruce is back?--and everything's great. Seriously. I missed you?"

He can tell he's not fooling her, but her smile softens regardless. "Well, I missed you too," she says, pecking him on the cheek--and then slipping away when he tries to settle his hands on her waist. She heads for the couch, though, not the bedroom, and the sidelong look she shoots him is definitely an invitation to follow. "So, who was the--"

Her feet still as she cuts herself off, and for a moment Tony's heart goes into overdrive. Is Charlie here? Did he make it up the stairs? Christ, does he even need stairs, and what's Pepper going to think? It's not like he can just kick Charlie out; it's probably not even physically possible, but especially not when he's been so...well...helpful. _Nice_ , even. He just doesn't like the idea of a tentacle monster hanging around his girlfriend, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with several ill-advised web searches.

"Tony?" Pepper asks. She sounds puzzled, not alarmed. "When did you get that sculpture?"

Sculpture? Tony hurries to her side and follows her stare.

There's a chunk of marble on the coffee table that might generously be described as art, but Tony's not convinced. It's solid black, dark enough to be obsidian, but it's clearly one of Clint's pranks, because it's a cuttlefish. A _cuttlefish_ of all things, maybe a foot long and eight inches high, perched on a lumpy base that's probably scratching up the finish of the solid oak brick that replaced a glass table after an unfortunate incident with a glove.

"I didn't," he groans, slipping past Pepper to throw himself down on the couch, arms and legs falling akimbo, hands still stuffed in his pockets. It's been a _long_ week. "Clint thinks he's funny," he adds morosely. _Cuttlefish._

Pepper gives a little snort of laughter, but she still looks confused. "Do I want to know?"

"Probably not. What were you going to say?"

The soft look is back as she sits down beside him, stretching her legs out and flexing her bare toes against the cool weight of the table. He wants to pull her feet into his lap, knead away the strain left by the killer heels she wears to look more intimidating, but he can't help himself. He's got a bad example to follow, and he's maybe been thinking about this for days.

Pepper's brows arch as he squirms around enough to lie down sideways, head in her lap, and sure enough, one small, cool hand settles briefly on his brow. It only lingers there for a second before smoothing over his hair, her fingers digging in on the next pass to lightly scratch her nails against his scalp.

"Mm," he says, going boneless as all the crazy of the last few weeks melts magically away. Maybe Barnes and Rogers have the right idea after all.

Pepper chuckles at him but doesn't stop petting. It's an excellent tradeoff.

"Oh, right," she says a few minutes later, pulling him back from the edge of sleep. "Who was Steve's friend?"

Okay, that wakes him up. "Uh...actually, it was a friend of Barnes', if you can believe it. Great guy--very, uh...handy to have in a fight. In a manner of speaking. It wasn't even really a fight. He just...swooped down, snatched up the bad guys, and disappeared. Very impressive."

"Hm," Pepper says.

Tony peels open an eye, but Pepper's just frowning at the statue again. "What?"

"Nothing," she says with a small smile, shaking her head. "It's just...Clint's statue. I think it's looking at me," she jokes, tousling Tony's hair.

Tony narrows his eyes.

He waits until Pepper heads into the bathroom later that night to get ready for bed before calling a glove to him. From the readings he's managed to obtain, Charlie exists in far too many dimensions at once, and Bruce's calculations suggest that touching the creature bare-skinned has the side-effect of phasing humans into at least two of those dimensions, one of which being Charlie's _mind_. Not wanting to end up like the Barnes of seven decades prior, Tony has no desire to come too close if his suspicions are correct, but the alloy of his suits _should_ be thick enough or confusing enough for short periods of time.

Sure enough, when he tries to pick the horrifying knick-knack up off the table, it's like trying to shift the Statue of Liberty by yanking on her crown.

"Charlie?" he asks for the second time that week. He shudders helplessly when the statue _moves_ , lifting its head to peer up at him as tentacled mouthparts sway and coil.

Charlie trills meekly, hunkering down against the table as his eyes go wide and melting.

"What are you _doing_ here?" Tony demands, trying to keep his voice down as he glances uneasily toward the bedroom. "And why do you look like that? Did you shrink your--wait. Did you _permeate the Tower_ and extrude yourself through the coffee table in the form of a--why a cuttlefish?"

Charlie hoots at him softly. Squinting one eye shut, Tony shakes his head and works his jaw, trying to convince his ears to pop, but it's no use. He didn't understand a _word_ of that.

"Honestly," he grumbles, "why are you not hanging out with Barnes? At least you two can communicate."

Charlie looks at him very solemnly and does something frankly obscene with his mouthparts. Tony comes closer to blushing than he has in years.

"Ah," he says, coughing into his fist. "He's...busy. Got it." So even cosmic terrors have basic notions of privacy. Who knew?

Charlie perks up a moment later and raspily coos something that actually sounds familiar. It's a sound he's made often enough that Tony's starting to be able to pick it out of the _range_ of brainbreakage Charlie's capable of, and he's really not sure he likes hearing it now.

"Okay, seriously," he insists with a scowl. "Why do you keep asking that about Barnes, and was that 'evolve' or 'spawn'?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to bump the rating. :3

Dawn's been coming earlier by the day, so there's a faint glow on the other side of Bucky's closed lids when he wakes, _before_ Steve can jostle him from his dreams by bounding out of bed like a dog hearing the jingle of a leash. After so many years of strict regimentation and a distinct lack of anything that could reasonably be called sleep, Bucky's just grateful he doesn't have to take his boyfriend for walkies. That's Sam's job, and more power to him.

He and Steve have mostly rolled apart in the night. Lying on his stomach, left arm hanging over the edge of the bed, Bucky can feel the warm stirring of Steve's breath on the bent right arm Bucky's pillowing his head on, the heat of Steve's calf where it's pressed against his own. He knows without turning his head to look that Steve will be scrunched down a little, curled on his side to face Bucky; he doesn't like letting Bucky out of his sight, even in their sleep.

Bucky's tempted to roll back into Steve's sturdy bulk, knowing he'll be caught and pulled close before Steve's even awake enough to notice, but they've been putting in a lot of late nights making sure Hydra's really gone this time, and he'd honestly just rather lie there like a lump until somebody forces him to move. Or someone makes breakfast. He might reconsider the moving thing if there's pancakes involved.

The sly ripple of a stray coil at the back of his neck makes Bucky hunch his shoulders in with a shudder. "Mmph," he manages, smooshing his face deeper into the pillow. If he's not getting up for Steve, he's damn well not getting up for-- "Charlie, knock it off," he groans as he's tickled again, three or four tentacles slithering lightly over his back. He reaches back with his left arm to swat Charlie away, but all he feels is air. Ugh. _Morning people_.

 _Huh?_ Charlie asks, convincingly innocent, blotting out some of the light from the oversized windows as he stops fucking around and shows himself. _Knock what off?_

At Bucky's side, Steve sits bolt upright with an articulate, "Gyah!" Big hands grab for anchors in the sheets, only Steve's right hand lands square on Bucky's ass. "Yeep!" Steve adds, an octave too high, staring at the thick mass of tentacles spilling out of the ceiling.

Bucky snorts. "That better not be a commentary on the goods," he warns, wiggling a little until Steve gets with the program.

 _Eep!_ Charlie echoes, getting entirely the wrong idea and retracting all his arms at once, retreating before Bucky can call him on his prank.

Or maybe Charlie's got entirely the _right_ idea. What the hell. Bucky's awake now, and sleep's not the only thing he missed like crazy while it was gone.

***

If there's one thing Bucky likes about living in the Tower, it's the armory. Because sure, there's a part of him that would've been happy never seeing another gun as long as he lived, but the rest of him knows to be appreciative of what he's got.

Turns out that what he's got is access to more weapons than even Hydra had cared to bestow upon him, and not just more but newer and better. He's pretty sure Tony is customizing some of them specifically for his use, but whenever Bucky tries to thank him for it or even get him to admit it, Tony just passes it off as prototype testing or something equally ridiculous. That's fine, though. Bucky can take a hint.

He takes good care of all his guns, but he takes _special_ care of the ones he knows are gifts.

He's already halfway to making an afternoon of it when Steve gets dragged off to the firing range by Natasha. Steve casts him wounded looks when all Bucky does is wave and grin from the couch, but what does Steve think Bucky's cleaning his guns _for_? He spends enough time on the range already. It's good for Steve to go with someone else anyway; Natasha won't go too easy _or_ too hard on him, not like Bucky would.

Of course, one downside to Steve being out of the apartment is that when Bucky realizes he left the spare pack of cleaning cloths over on the side table, he has to get up and get it him--

"Oh," he says as a narrow tentacle reaches past his shoulder and drops the fresh pack onto the coffee table with the rest of his supplies. "Thanks."

Charlie doesn't say anything, but Charlie gets busy sometimes with the others: Bruce with his data collecting and Tony with his...Tony-ness. It's funny to think Charlie's watched him do this so many times he knows what Bucky needs before Bucky even says anything, but it's...really nice, too. Having friends again.

He's humming quietly to himself, reassembling something that might have started life as a SIG, when Steve comes home, finds him smiling, and smiles right back.

***

Maybe it's the knockoff serum. There's really no way to tell. The only person he can ask is Steve, and the version _he_ got was stronger.

All Bucky knows is that his libido is more like it was at sixteen than what it should be at twenty-nine, not that he's complaining. Of far more importance is the fact that Steve's not complaining either, because Bucky can't seem to get enough of him. Bucky has no idea what's normal for normal people, but for him and Steve, it's every night unless one of them's on a mission, every morning they both wake up together instead of one of them waking too early or too late, sometimes in the afternoons for no reason at all.

Doesn't matter where they are or what they do: Bucky's as happy to push Steve up against the wall and drop to his knees as he is to tumble Steve onto a bed, like now, kneeling between the legs hooked over his shoulders and rolling his hips into long, steady strokes as Steve comes apart beneath him. Steve looks amazing like this, his skin sheened with sweat and his eyes half-lidded, the cut muscles of his stomach and arms tensing and relaxing in time as he rocks up to meet Bucky on every thrust. He hasn't quite gone over the edge of control yet, but Bucky will get him there. He's in no hurry. He just wants Steve to feel good, so fucking good, better than he ever has or ever will a--

" _Fuck_ ," Steve breathes out explosively, eyes flying wide to stare up at Bucky in naked shock, hands fisting on the sheets until threads pop in his grip. There's more sense in his eyes than Bucky expects in that moment, but on the next stroke Steve's mouth falls open and stays there on a silent, strangled cry.

"What?" Bucky asks as he falters, on the verge of stopping entirely. Have they been going at it too long? Does Steve need a break, or is something wrong?

Steve tightens his legs, one sliding down to curl around Bucky's hip, all but dragging him in. "N-nothing," Steve manages on a swallow that ends on a gasp. "Ab-absolutely nothing. Keep--oh, _fuck_."

Yeah, Bucky can take a hint. He keeps going.

He'd sure like to know what he did to get Steve so worked up, though, just so he can do it again.

***

The bad guys have jet packs, which Tony seems to be taking as a nuisance and Sam as a personal affront. Clint's just having fun with those ridiculous grappling arrows of his, but that's Clint. Bucky's mainly concerned for the members of the team who can't fly and aren't crazy, which today amounts to Natasha and Steve. He'd include himself, but he's never too sure about the crazy.

He's hanging back, sticking to the rooftops and picking off suspiciously-familiar goons with his rifle when he finds himself a little _too_ far from the others. Suddenly he's got a dozen guys piling in on him, armed with those fucking stun batons that still set his teeth on edge after how many times they've been used on him, and how much they remind him of the chair, and that's before some asshole takes a swing at his _head_.

It's not an instant lights-out. No matter how much voltage it is, he's never that lucky. He has time to feel everything seize, his thoughts whiting out to a wordless, empty state, before instinct takes over.

He whips an arm back to crash across the face of the bastard that just clocked him, snatches three more batons from panic-tight hands and headbutts the fucker staring wide-eyed right in front of him. A spinning kick sends one of the guys he just disarmed flying off the edge of the roof, and he grabs three-- _four_ more at his back and pitches them over in chase of him. The others are dropping the batons, going for their guns, so he lashes out with his left arm as the silvery plates spin apart and unspool into a writhing tangle of metal that bats bullets out of the air.

His left arm reforms painlessly as he dives to the side, tucking and rolling. Other arms wind tightly around him and phase him right through the legs of one moron too slow to get out of the way. That one lets out a high, reedy shriek, though there's not a damn thing wrong with him--not until Bucky rolls to his feet, wraps three sturdy, black coils around his neck, and hauls him back in time to play meat shield as his friends open fire.

Drawing his own guns, Bucky fires around the jerking body held in front of him as he backs away. They've got the others' attention now, Tony swooping in and almost overshooting his mark, but then Steve comes scrambling up the fire escape just as one of Clint's grappling hooks embeds itself in the low wall that surrounds the roof. Steve's eyes are enormous as they snag on Bucky's, but Steve doesn't hesitate, charging in at an all-out sprint and lobbing his shield ahead of him.

The fight's over pretty quickly from there, but then things just get weird. Sam and Natasha join them on the roof, and then Bucky's got five people all staring at him in various degrees of shock. He puts his guns away slowly, just in case he's maybe gone a little intense for everybody's peace of mind, but that doesn't help the way he'd expected.

Rolling his neck uncomfortably, he flicks his eyes from face to face, mouth pursed. "Uh...what?" he asks at last, catching his lower lip between his teeth. "I didn't, like...have an _episode_ or anything, if that's what you're wondering."

Steve shakes his head fast. "No, uh--it's--you...um...arms?"

 _Yes_? he's tempted to say. He's still got two...so to speak. Only...that's...not exactly true...?

He peers down at his left palm, but then he casts an uncertain glance over his shoulder, and wow, yeah. That's different.

There's a good two dozen ropy tentacles sticking out of his back, but it's not like they hurt; they haven't even messed up his mission uniform, phasing right through everything the same way Charlie does. The thing is, they don't feel quite like Charlie, so it's not like his friend broke off a _piece_ of himself and left it inside Bucky or anything. The arms just...feel like him.

It occurs to him belatedly that he probably ought to be having a meltdown right about now, but the urge just isn't there. Not like it's been blocked or cut out of him, like in his Winter Soldier days; he has a very distinct opinion on those arms, only it amounts to a big, fat heap of pleasant indifference. That's probably something he's going to want to take up with Charlie, but for now? Right now he mostly just wants to know if he can reel those arms back in, like--

Right. That's better.

"Shit," Tony blurts out, shaking himself abruptly. "Wait, I didn't get a chance to take any readings! Here, pull those back out for a sec," he says, starting forward and reaching for Bucky like he means to take him by the shoulder and turn him bodily around.

"Whoa," Sam says firmly, throwing an arm out to obstruct Tony's path. "You probably don't want to be touching those things, remember?"

"No, uh...they're pretty safe," Steve offers distractedly, only to snap his mouth shut an instant later. Now everyone's staring at _him_. Steve blushes from collar to hairline but doesn't take it back. He doesn't elaborate, either.

O...kay, then.

Now he _definitely_ needs to talk to Charlie.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably going to slow down now while I work on getting more stuff archived for Tentacle Week, but I can already see myself adding to this at random the next time I'm in the mood for tentaporn or tentacle fight scenes, or just tentacles in general. It should always be "readable as complete" though, because honestly, wow, that's quite a lot of crack! :3
> 
> Thanks for your patience with all the spam!

If the armor isn't busted beyond repair, Tony usually flies on ahead after a mission is done. Steve tries not to let it get to him; he knows Tony usually takes that opportunity to make sure the coast is clear. Sam hangs back about half the time, patching them up or helping them refocus post-battle jitters into something more constructive. Some days Steve honestly doesn't know how they got along without him.

Today they all pile into the Quinjet together, but Sam takes one look at Bucky and heads forward to settle behind the controls, clearly feeling his more professional services aren't needed. Steve wishes he were half so confident.

"Okay," Tony pipes up while the rest of them are still getting settled, Steve still searching for something to say. Natasha and Clint trade speaking glances and settle nearby but with their heads bent together, demonstrating their solidarity but giving them the illusion of space. "So...that happened."

Bucky shrugs. He still seems impossibly calm for someone who just had a collection of alien tentacles sprouting from his back. Bucky's always been good at rolling with the punches, it's true, but this...this is something different. "Yeah, well. I'll talk to Charlie when we get back. Hope that didn't, uh...."

"No," Steve says in a hurry, "it's fine!" He might be speaking out of turn there, but no one looks ready to object when he darts a quick look around at the others. "I mean--you're fine, right?

"Sure," Bucky says, brows arching up in surprise before he catches himself. "I mean, okay, I'm pretty sure I should be gibbering in a corner or something," he admits, relieving at least one of Steve's worries. At least he's aware there's a problem. "But nah. Everything's good."

"Well, do you want us there when you...?"

Bucky snorts, the corners of his mouth quirking up in his trademark grin. "What, when I call Charlie out for a family discussion in the living room? _You_ can come, seeing as you live there and all...."

"What about me?" Tony demands, widening his eyes with a soulful look to hide the curiosity that must be eating him alive. "I live there too--I lived there first! Living there was my idea!"

"Nice try," Bucky drawls. "But seriously, guys...it's Charlie, not some random space monster. Whatever weird thing he did, it's not like he meant to do it."

Steve really wants to believe that, but.... "Buck--"

"Steve, he thought fixing my arm would fix my _memory_ ," Bucky points out doggedly. "It's not like he understands how humans work. I just want to know what he _thinks_ he did so I can maybe figure out what he _actually_ did, that's all."

Steve chews on his bottom lip, hands clenching on his knees where he's braced them to keep from reaching for Bucky and...honestly, he's not sure where that impulse would go, which is why he's fighting it. He can tell himself he just wants to slide a hand down Bucky's back and make sure he's still in one piece, but not stopping until he's made a thorough examination is a definite possibility. He'd thought Bucky's... _other_ tentacles were the result of shapeshifting. Hell, he'd thought Bucky had known what he was doing. And Steve had been appreciative--that is, _supportive_. Steve had been very, very supportive. But having various--specialized?--tentacles isn't the only thing Bucky has been willfully blind to.

"You, uh...you do realize...when you and Charlie first met. I mean...it's not like the rest of us are easily spooked. And even if he didn't mean to...."

"Look," Tony cuts in again, for which Steve is grateful. "What Cap's trying to say is, the first time Charlie touched you, you probably had your mind exploded across fifteen dimensions at once." Make that less grateful. Bucky goes very still, but Tony soldiers on, chin determined and eyes kind. "Now, obviously he put you back together the best he knew how, but you know how you said Hydra's brainwashing didn't work at first? There may have been some cracks left over after Charlie patched you up."

Bucky's silent a long moment, eyes sliding down to frown thoughtfully at the floor. Natasha turns her head, silently sizing Bucky up while he's distracted, but whatever she sees seems to set her mind at ease. She nudges Clint with her elbow and smiles, one brow quirking in a way that makes Clint sputter with laughter. Right. Steve _doesn't want to know_.

Bucky shakes his head at last and looks up with half a shrug. "Like you said. He did his best," Bucky says, holding first Tony's eyes then Steve's. "Wasn't his fault I was there in the first place, and if he'd left me alone, I'd be dead. It's not like Hydra had any intention of coming back for me when they left me there."

"You're sure?" Steve asks.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Bucky says, smiling like he knows Steve can't help himself. "Hey, I wonder if this makes Charlie my sire, like in those vampire movies you people keep making me watch."

Tony's been sitting with his armored elbows braced on his knees, but now he sits upright with a jolt, suit and all. "Fuck," he breathes, wide eyes staring at nothing. "That's what...he wants _grandkids_."

Clint makes an odd choking noise and turns to bang his head on Natasha's shoulder. She lets him do it, rolling her lips in and struggling for once to maintain an impassive expression.

Bucky frowns. "What?"

***

Bucky shoots Steve a patient smirk as they step out of the elevator onto their floor. Steve's in full mother hen mode, and while it's a little weird--Bucky's not used to having anyone fuss over him--he's not the least bit ashamed to admit that he likes it. It's nice. Unwarranted, sure, but nice.

"Hey, Charlie," he calls as he heads for the couch, intent mostly on getting his boots off. "You awake?"

 _You're back!_ Charlie greets him cheerfully, dropping a thick mass of tentacles out of the ceiling. The tips curl up and track him like the heads of rearing snakes, and though Charlie doesn't need them to see, Bucky appreciates the effort nonetheless. Talking to disembodied voices like JARVIS is just weird. _Did you catch the bad--oh!_

More tentacles come pushing through, enough to have brought the ceiling crashing down with their weight if Charlie was actually living in the crawlspace. What happens next is just...instinct, Bucky guesses. Inspired by their much larger cousins, Bucky's own tentacles--and how weird is that?--come slithering out, through muscle and skin and the bulletproof material of his tac suit, reaching up to tangle with their kin. _Bucky! You've evolved!_

The embarrassing thing is, Charlie can't pronounce Bucky's name any better than Bucky can pronounce his. He's deeply grateful that's never occurred to anyone else, because it's going to be mortifying if he ever has to explain that Charlie's name for him is 'Favorite.'

"Yeah, uh, about that--"

 _Oh, look at them!_ Charlie coos, gently curling the tips of his bulkier limbs around Bucky's. _They're so cute! I could just eat them up!_

And that's the other thing. Even he still has to _translate_ when it comes to Charlie. 'I could just eat them up' sounds a hell of a lot better than 'I could just dissolve the bonds between our molecular selves and absorb your shapeless mass and unmoored consciousness to drift within me for eternity,' that's for sure, but Bucky knows what he means.

"That sounds messy," he jokes, grinning sidelong as Steve comes cautiously closer. Charlie's answering laugh is giddy. He won't quit swinging Bucky's coils gently within his own, like a proud new parent encouraging their toddler's first footsteps. "Aw, c'mon, you're embarrassing me, here. Look, I just wanted to ask, uh--why...did you think I'd evolve in the first place?"

Charlie twitches in surprise, letting Bucky's own tentacles go. They retreat at once, appeased or maybe made bashful by all the attention. _Because you were always going to. Well. There was a_.... Charlie hesitates, coils wringing uncertainly as he grasps for the right words. _A knot. Very tightly snarled. I took it out when I fixed your arm--they weren’t compatible._

Bucky gets the feeling Charlie's talking about a tangle both inside his head and within his body, maybe at the genetic level--there's actually not much difference between the two where Charlie's concerned. He's just a little too distracted by the timeline to pay that the attention he ought. "Wait, always? I was--this isn't something you did?"

 _Nnnooooo...? I don't think so. It's like...you had your eyes closed._ Charlie doesn't exactly have a concept of sight; there's only _knowing_ and _ignoring_. The meaning he tries to shape is that Bucky had been inwardly-focused, deliberately inattentive, self-stubborn-blind to the world around him. _So I opened them for you and showed you how to see._

"Huh." Steve's giving him a meaningful look, patience running thin as he waits for a translation, but Bucky's still trying to pull his own thoughts together. "So anyone could do this? With the tentacles, and the--the phasing through matter thing?" In retrospect, that's probably the one thing that actually trips him up: how he'd just slipped right _through_ that one guy like Bucky had become the single, solid thing in a world made of water or air.

 _Mmm...I suppose_ , Charlie says reluctantly, clearly not enthused by the idea. _Anyone who learned to see properly could come in here with the rest of us. But most of them wouldn't taste right. They'd mostly get eaten._

The rest. The _rest_ of them. And come _in_ , like Bucky hadn't so much passed through matter as slipped into some other plane and back out again. A plane where there are _others_.

He opens his mouth, hesitates, and closes it again. That...probably isn't something he wants to mention to the team if it's making _him_ nervous just thinking about it.

"Yeah?" he asks instead, switching gears with a grin. "So what do I taste like?" He waves Steve off before Steve gets more than one startled step closer. 'Taste' may sound ominous, but it's the best Charlie can do with no clear understanding of senses that don't include assimilation as a mechanism.

 _Spawnling!_ Charlie announces gleefully, instants before a veritable tidal wave of tentacles spill over and around Bucky, engulfing him in a warm, comforting weight that smells vaguely like the dog watch of a Brooklyn summer night, seventy years ago.

"Aw, jeez," Bucky groans with a helpless laugh, patting random bits of Charlie and pushing heavy coils away from his face before Steve can panic. For such a tactile guy, Steve is very anti-hugging, at least when it comes to Charlie.

Sure enough, Steve is balanced on the balls of his feet, fingers twitching with the stifled urge to pry Bucky loose. "What'd he say?"

Bucky snorts, trying to will away a blush. "That I'm irresistible to anyone with a nurturing instinct," he mutters. It's miles better than 'I smell like babies and hand-knitted blankets, Steve, what the fuck?'

Steve mumbles something that sounds like, "Obviously," but Bucky's just going to ignore that.

He clears his throat. Charlie pulls away, putting his listening face on, which mostly involves a host of tentacles cocked attentively in his direction. "Yeah, so while we're on the subject...what have you been saying to Tony? He's seriously losing his mind thinking someone's going to spawn or something."

Half a dozen tentacles eel sideways in a shrug, strangely subdued. Disappointed? Charlie looks like he's _pouting_ , and Bucky's not quite sure what to do with that. _Well...when you showed up with your mate, I thought you were looking for a safe place._

"Uh." That...definitely doesn't sound like 'don't mind Tony; it's _Tony_ ' to him.

 _And of course I don't_ mind. _With just the two of you, you'd never have enough arms to keep track of them all, even now that you've evolved. You are_ looking _to spawn, right? I mean, you two share_ all the time. _Did...no one ever tell you, erm_...?

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait," Bucky says urgently, lifting his hands as if to ward Charlie off. The last thing he wants is to get The Talk from his extradimensional friend. "Yeah, we know all that, thanks. Uh...you do know I'm a guy, right?" he asks, tuning out Steve's stifled sputter. "We don't tend to spawn much of anything."

Charlie's tentacles still, perplexed. _What?_

"And Steve's a--wait, what do you mean 'what'?"

***

Steve knows he shouldn't laugh. Bucky keeps telling him Charlie doesn't really get humans, but it's never really sunk in quite as firmly as just now. He's heard Bruce and Tony talking, and neither of them are certain Charlie actually has a body outside the tentacles; Charlie's concept of gender might be very, very different from their own.

Honestly it's picturing Tony's face when he realizes he's been quietly panicking over nothing that makes him--

Bucky's eyes go wide and horrified, and the bottom drops out of Steve's word. "Hell," Bucky mutters, staggering backwards to drop gracelessly onto the couch. The way his face screws up in a pained grimace, it's clear he'd rather be anywhere but here, but he only has eyes for Charlie. "Seriously? I'm gonna have to do this?"

"What?" Steve demands, heart in his throat. What's going on? Is Bucky _actually going to spawn_? Jesus, _spawning_ \--that implies _volume_ , doesn't it?

Hell, indeed. Steve takes a deep breath, trying desperately to pull himself together.

Tony...Tony could set aside space for the, ah...brood, right? And Bruce could help them figure out what to do if the kids are...not quite as human as they could be. And Clint--Clint looks like he'd be good with kids. But more important than any of that will be making sure Bucky doesn't feel like--

"Okay," Bucky says slowly, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. "Okay. It's like this. When two humans love each other _very much_...."

***

Hearing a strangled shout and a crash from Tony's office isn't actually all that unusual, so Pepper doesn't drop everything and run to investigate. Instead she sets everything down nearly and _walks_ to investigate, bracing herself for anything she might find. Whatever it is, it's not likely to be armed or dangerous; JARVIS would have been sounding the alarm otherwise.

Peering inside, she finds Tony on the floor, one arm wrapped around his ribs and the other slung over the armrest of his office chair. An instant crackle of panic jolts through her, but on closer inspection, she realizes the shout was a strangled bark of laughter; it seems like Tony fell out of his seat shortly thereafter and has been reduced to breathless wheezing as he tries to climb back into it.

"Are you all right?" she asks, just to be certain.

"Birds!" Tony forces out through his nearly-empty lungs as he collapses back into his chair, which threatens to roll right out from under him. He waves helplessly at the absurdity of the universe--or perhaps at whatever's playing across his laptop screen.

"I see."

"Bees!" Tony squeaks before dissolving into laughter once more, dropping his head down onto his desk, shoulders shaking.

Against her better judgment, she crosses the room to stand at his side, glancing at what appears to be a live feed from a few floors below.

She frowns, and not just at the shameless violation of Steve and James' privacy.

"Is James giving The Talk to a...a tentacle monster?"

She probably should have asked JARVIS instead. It's clear Tony's going to be no help at all.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this one's essentially porn and...mechanics? visualization?...and practically negative plot. If you are _not_ here for the tentacle porn, feel free to skip to the next chapters, where the eldritch crackfluff resumes.

Stretched out in the middle of their ridiculously large bed, Steve tips his head back, the vulnerable column of his neck stretched taut in invitation as Bucky pauses to lap at the hollow of his throat. It's not the show of defenselessness that draws him like a magnet--that's never done anything for him, appeals even less after his time with Hydra--but the raw sounds of pleasure Steve makes as Bucky draws his tongue along corded tendons, teases with teeth until Steve's begging him to bite. He hums a little as Steve's left hand slides into his hair, holding him close. Because it's Steve, he doesn't shake it off.

Leaning up for a kiss, he presses a little too close. Steve's hips arch, his cock sliding along the thin skin of Bucky's inner hip, threatening to unseat him from where he's half-lying across Steve, one leg thrown carelessly over Steve's thighs. Steve groans, surging up to meet him halfway, and then they're rolling, Steve pinning him down and kissing him breathless. Bucky's hands find anchors on broad shoulders, his bent leg hooking around Steve's waist, but soon enough Steve is sliding away, trailing kisses down Bucky's chest.

Steve can be a merciless tease at times, but tonight he doesn't hesitate. With one hand braced on the bed for balance and the other locked around Bucky's hip, Steve swallows him down and comes up slow, tongue painting wet loops and spirals over every inch. Bucky isn't remotely embarrassed by the strangled sound he makes, fucking loves the smug delight in the eyes that tip up to meet his own.

Taking him in again, Steve keeps the pace slow, but he savors Bucky like he's ravenous for it. His tongue clings and curls, rubs along the slit and the flare of his cockhead until Bucky has to fist his left hand hard and press it against the mattress to keep from grabbing Steve and forcing his mouth back down again. It's almost impossible not to move, his hips wanting to stutter up into the wet heat taking him apart, but Steve's being too fucking good to him to get greedy about it now. Anything--anything Steve wants--Bucky can do that.

"Hng," he groans helplessly as Steve takes him deep again, all the way in, tongue pressing hard at the base of his cock and sliding up, and through, and...between.

Bucky freezes, every muscle going rigid as he stares up at the ceiling. That...doesn't make sense. Steve's mouth is pulling off him, which does make sense, but Steve isn't bolting from the bed, and that makes the least sense of all. What...?

He glances down, and the first thing he sees is Steve's face, patient and unafraid and completely unsurprised. Then his eyes flick down, and--

A muscle in his cheek twitches. That.

Holy _fuck_.

He has...tentacles. Well, he already knew he had tentacles, but he has _tentacles_. There. Where his cock should be. Flesh-toned, apparently solid tentacles. Six or maybe eight. Should he be counting? He's definitely measuring, and they're...a bit longer, definitely _thicker_ taken all together, but the scary part is that they seem to be prehensile, totally flexible from root to tip. A few drift sideways toward the hand on his hip and rub pleadingly along Steve's thumb, sending sparks of pleasure right up Bucky's spine that threaten to short out his brain altogether.

"You know," Steve says conversationally, shifting so that he's practically lying on Bucky's legs, propping his cheek on his fist. "I was actually expecting them to be like the others. Well, not the first time--this is actually what I pictured then, but--"

"The first time?" Bucky echoes, casting his mind back and-- _fuck_. He knows exactly which time Steve is talking about, remembers all too clearly Steve's startled look, the way he just about came unglued and wouldn't let Bucky stop even after he'd been fucked through a bone-shaking orgasm. "Jesus. Are you all right?" he demands, nearly a week too late.

Steve grins. "Definitely all right. Definitely _very_ all right. Very, very, very all right."

Bucky stares helplessly. This isn't a _joke_ \--but Steve doesn't look like he is joking. He looks...pleased. Content. And he's wearing that patient look from seventy years ago when he had to sit through Bucky's sputtering shock at being given a _yes_ and wait for Bucky to get back with the program.

Still. "Are you sure?" he has to ask, half-sitting up and leaning on his elbows. "I mean...I don't...how do these things even work? Because if you think I'm doing that--" Oh, Jesus, _that_ , because Steve's got a free hand and too much guts to go with too much curiosity, and he's threading his fingers through Bucky's tentacles in a slow, unhurried glide. "--on purpose," he gasps as things knot and twist, actively seeking out more stimulation, more of Steve's skin, more of everything. "Think...oh, fuck...again."

"I'm sure," Steve says, eyes dropping from his to watch with hungry fascination as Bucky's coils follow his hand as he draws it back, winding around Steve's fingers and slipping loose only reluctantly. "Can I...?"

He should probably be the responsible one, tell Steve to keep it simple if he can't be talked out of it. Just his hand feels amazing, like Bucky's getting the same sensation six--eight?--times over. He's not going to last long at all at this rate.

"Whatever you want," he says instead and watches in disbelief as Steve lights up like a kid at Christmas.

Just like before, Steve doesn't try to drag it out. He scrambles up, pins Bucky's hips with both hands this time, and buries his face at the base of those strange new appendages with unguarded enthusiasm. He doesn't flinch when unoccupied coils drag over his cheeks, his jaw. He opens his mouth--opens it wider when three tentacles stuff themselves inside and a fourth tries to join them--humming encouragingly when Bucky grits his teeth and tries not to let them go too deep.

That works about as well as trying to say no in the first place, but Steve just sighs in satisfaction, eyes slipping closed as other coils drift down, shivering at the scratch of stubble as they explore Steve's neck, the frantic bob of his Adam's apple as he swallows and swallows again. Bucky's flying by then, Steve's hands on his hips the only thing keeping him still, left arm humming as the plates rattle and shift in a ripple that travels from his wrist to his shoulder. He wants to touch Steve, pull him in and wrap him up, hold him down and close and _fuck_ \--

There go the other tentacles, sliding out through Bucky's back and straight through the mattress, rising up again like a forest of snakes. Steve doesn't shy away, even when one settles at the back of his neck and curves itself to the base of his skull. It doesn't push--Bucky's got that much control--but it's there all the same.

Steve tightens his hands on Bucky's hips and tries to lean in even closer, nearly choking on a moan. Bucky tries to urge him back, the tentacle at Steve's nape slipping down to wrap lightly around his throat.

Steve shudders, freeing a hand to reach down and palm his own cock, and that breaks the last thread that's holding Bucky together. "Steve," he warns, more tentacles wrapping around Steve's shoulders, his arms, but Steve's not budging and he's too close to the edge to hold off any longer.

It's messy as hell when he comes, down Steve's throat and onto his chest, his neck, but Steve doesn't seem to mind. Three tugs and Steve is following him, no longer resisting the tentacles trying to pry him off. He goes boneless instead, lets them take his weight as he stiffens and shakes, coming so hard he's still breathless even now that his mouth is free.

Bucky pulls Steve up the bed as gently as he can, holding his arms out and letting Steve collapse against him. They're both in desperate need of a shower, but Steve is a warm, comforting weight Bucky wouldn't trade for the world.

"All right?" Bucky asks after Steve's panting breaths slow.

"Definitely," Steve says with a smile Bucky can feel where the corner of Steve's mouth is pressed against his chest. "Very. Very, _very_."

"Punk," Bucky mutters with a huff of laughter.

At least Steve's happy. Bucky's just not sure how to tell him that he has no idea how to change everything back.


	7. Chapter 7

There's a line Bucky half-remembers about woods being lovely, dark and deep, but being two for three means he has no idea how lovely they are. The team had meant to arrive late afternoon, had planned on locating the underground Hydra base before sunset and being out before nightfall, but absolutely nothing about this mission has gone as planned. They'd been delayed starting out with some glitch in the Quinjet's navigational systems, which had cropped up again as they passed over the forest on their way to the landing zone. Tony's still muttering about it--his repairs should have held--but the long and short of it is that they've been reduced to stumbling around in the dark like one of those shaky-cam horror movies the others like to heckle.

The thing is, they really should have found the base by now. Bucky's been here before; he knows all the landmarks. There's just something...weird in the air tonight.

A city kid at heart, before the war he'd always thought of forests as quiet, except maybe for a chorus of frogs for ambience. Turns out that's not the case at all. The wind through the branches roars and hisses like the hum of a highway, underscored by the creak of shifting limbs. There are sounds he recognizes and others he doesn't: the cheery chirp of crickets, the far-off drone of cicadas, other raspy insect calls that click and chitter and--bleat?

That...was definitely not a bug.

"I'm getting heat signatures," Tony pipes up at Bucky's back, currently on foot like the rest of them. He'd started out aloft, their only air support this time, but the Quinjet's navigation issues had jumped to the suit, spreading like a virus. The rest of them aren't really complaining; Tony makes an excellent flashlight. "Make that a lot of heat signatures. Nothing human, but...still basically bipedal. Basically."

On Bucky's left, Steve limbers up his shield arm while Natasha draws her guns. Clint nocks an arrow, and this time nobody makes any Robin Hood cracks, not even Tony.

The suit's joints whine faintly as Tony turns as he walks to make a full-circuit scan of the woods. "Aaand we're surrounded," he announces, powering up the repulsors in his gloves.

Steve's worried sidelong glance darts first to Bucky's face and then to his empty hands. Bucky knows he should be going for his own guns, but something's nagging at him. Something familiar.

"Guys, hold up," he says as they all straggle to a stop, facing outward and ready to fight. He's...not--not ready and not fighting--the tickle in the back of his head grown into a steady pressure, insistent but blunt-edged. Not a threat. "Do you...feel that?"

Steve frowns, cocking his head in unconscious imitation of Bucky. He looks like he's listening, which isn't quite what Bucky had asked, only the question of what he's hearing is suddenly rendered moot.

"Oh, fuck," Clint breathes, jerking up his bow as a piece of the darkness dead ahead breaks off and leans down--and _down_ \--toward them. It's massive, stretching taller than the trees, shouldering aside stout branches that crackle and snap as it pushes through. Bright gold eyes with the weird, flat pupils of an octopus or a goat open like twin moons, and by the light radiating from Tony's palms, Bucky can just make out the curling sharpness of claws, what might be horns, the fog-like drift of shaggy black fur.

Braced for the bark of gunfire and the muffled hiss of Clint's arrows in flight, Bucky's breath catches and holds as the silence stretches. Startled, he glances back to find the others hesitating, not panicked but indecisive. Their eyes keep wavering to _him_.

"Wait, wait, wait," Tony says in a rush, "hold your fire! The big one's giving off readings just like--"

_You're not my worthless brother_ , the giant growls, narrowing her eyes as she folds herself down like a mountain caving in. Her voice is a throaty contralto, deep and resonant, with just the hint of something rougher underneath. A whiskey voice, he might've said once; maybe folks still say that. The others don't seem to agree; Tony has to choke back a whimper, and Clint shudders like someone just dropped a whole bucket of minnows down his back.

The giant sniffs the air once, then leans closer to him to sniff again. _Hn. You must be Favorite._

"Uh...close enough, ma'am," Bucky says, ignoring Tony's bark of incredulous laughter while debating the merits of introducing himself properly. He might end up with another mortifying nickname if he tries; he's not sure it's worth the risk. 

_Hmph. Sending a spawnling to watch the young,_ she grumbles, sitting back on her haunches. _That idiot._

"Er." Okay, no. Something has clearly been lost in translation, because she can't possibly mean what he thinks she means. "Watch...?"

_Children!_ she snaps, turning her head slowly under the weight of mammoth horns to glare over her shoulder. _Come here. Now be good for your Uncle Favorite._

Things... _chitter_ out in the darkness as a thousand lean shapes slink closer to the light: man-sized but not quite man-shaped, shaggy-furred and black as pitch. Many are crowned like their mother, but no two are quite alike, their horns spiraling and straight, massive and tiny, set cock-eyed or mismatched or broken.

The giant glances back at Bucky as her young creep closer. _Eat the ones that misbehave,_ she says shortly, ignoring the pleading whines that follow.

"Uh...sure." She doesn't really think he's going to eat anyone, does she? They're as big as he is. "But, uh--" It's too late; she's already straightening, trees groaning as she turns and shoves ancient limbs aside with hands like steamrollers. "Hey, wait--uh, lady--?"

He's not sure what to make of her expression when she turns: arch and expectant, not quite insulted. _Yet._

"Sorry," he says sheepishly. "I didn't catch your name."

He listens hard when he spots the first flash of teeth, but the creaking, rustling, _growling_ din goes in one ear and out the other. Sh-something. Shun? Shove?

_"Iä! Iä!"_ her young gibber at the sound, pressing close to each other but away from her. Bucky winces. Someone's definitely not going to be winning Mom of the Year award anytime soon.

"Shirley," he decides. Tony groans; he ignores that too. "Right. Look, uh...unplanned babysitting aside, there's enemy agents out there--"

_Enemy?_ she echoes thoughtfully over the others' sputtering, half-voiced questions. _You didn't want them, then._

Okay, that sounds ominous. "No?"

_Good. Because I didn't save you any. I've enough mouths to feed as it is._

Right. That's...about what he'd figured, actually. "Yeah, no problem. That, uh...saves us some work, actually, if you got them all. Just--where are you going?"

She huffs impatiently. _To_ sleep. _Raising young is hard work--which you can remind my idiot brother of the next time you see him,_ she adds with a pointed stare.

Damn. He thinks he knows what delayed them now--or should he say _who_. Charlie's been acting shifty lately, turning on the nature channel whenever deep sea episodes air and waxing poetic about the joys of parenthood. If he'd set them up to show up after dark, knowing Shirley's presence would fry their navigation systems a second time and leave them on the hook to watch her young....

Shirley stalks off without another word, dry mulch and the occasional rotting log crackling beneath her heavy tread.

One by one her young creep closer, while at Bucky's back, the team bunches up, backs to each other, eyes on the shadows on all sides. Bucky scratches his nose. He hasn't babysat anyone since Becca got old enough to take over the job, and he's not sure he'd remember how it goes anyway. Still, he can't do much worse than eating the troublemakers, right?

"All right," he says, lifting his voice sternly to be heard across the clearing. "You in the back--stop hitting your brother. You're not even big enough to make a decent snack." The little guy whines, ducking his head as a thousand pairs of glowing gold eyes blink attentively. "The rest of you, sit. Aunt Tasha's going to tell us a story."

"Me?" Natasha asks, shooting him an incredulous look. He should probably be grateful she doesn't just shoot him, but he didn't pick her because bedtime stories are supposedly a "mom" thing.

"You probably remember the Baba Yaga tales better than I do," he explains with a shrug.

"Hm." Natasha's mouth quirks into a tiny smile.

"And make sure you get the endings right," he adds, leaving the others to join Shirley's young, dropping down to sit cross-legged with his hands laced neatly in his lap. It's important to set a good example.

Natasha arches a brow. "You want me to do Hansel and Gretel next?"

Bucky grins, cocking an elbow out as one of the young comes closer, sniffs him, and tries to squirm in under his arm. "You're the best."

***

Steve stares. He knows-- _knows_ \--that he should stop being surprised at how weird their lives have gotten. He should definitely stop being surprised at how normal Bucky seems to think it all is.

He is _always_ going to be blindsided by that particular look Bucky gets when he's engrossed in the moment: wide-eyed and _young_ , an unconscious smile tugging at his mouth. That he's positively buried in monsters--two huddled against his sides, one resting its shaggy, horned head on his right shoulder, the smallest of the bunch curled up in his lap--is startlingly...cute.

He's not crazy enough to admit it, but he's starting to get where Charlie's coming from.

On his left, Tony heaves an enormous sigh.

"All right," Tony groans, "all right, already. You can have a dog."

Steve grins.

"But Barnes isn't picking it out," Tony hastens to add.

"That...would probably be for the best," Steve admits, wondering all the same if there's room for him over there. He's pretty sure Bucky wouldn't mind adding to the pile one bit.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hilariously, I had these last two chapters done before chapter six, so I had to wait since it seemed weird to "end" (read: leave hanging until next time) on a porny note instead of a cracky note. Anyway, this one has mentioned themes of animal abuse and animal death, so check the tags if you think you may need to tread lightly. Er, assumes you have some familiarity with Lovecraft when you check the tags; google anything unfamiliar!

Having an elevator for a front door makes it hard to storm in properly, but Bucky manages. Steve looks up from his book with a start, sitting up from his slump on the couch. Bucky's still in his tactical gear, hair pulled back in an indifferent tail, the cold rage in his eyes and the harsh line of his mouth pure Winter Soldier. He's still bristling with guns, his arms pulled tight across his chest, and damn it, Steve _knew_ he should have tried harder to sync up their missions. It's just that Bucky and Natasha should have been more than enough for the recon trip they'd been sent on--recon Steve is spectacularly bad at.

"Buck? What is it? Is everyone all right?"

"Yes," Bucky growls shortly before he catches himself, realizing Steve wants details, not a mission report. "We're fine. Just ran into more than we bargained for."

Steve blinks when a tiny black head pops up from the cradle of Bucky's arms and blinks wide, green eyes at him before yawning hugely. It's a kitten, Steve realizes as he rises for a better look, solid black, barely old enough to be weaned. "You infiltrated a pet store?" Steve jokes, knowing Bucky's still furious as hell and trying to get him to talk.

"Don't I wish," Bucky snarls, cuddling the kitten closer to his chest. It bears the snuggling with surprisingly good grace. Most of the kittens Steve's met have two settings: comet and comatose; hugging isn't really on their list of things to do. "There was this old couple at the edge of town. They had _all these cats_ , Steve."

"Hoarders?" he asks sympathetically. Clint makes a point of going down to the shelters whenever mass rescues come in, and Steve joins him whenever he can. He's not sure whether he's grateful or just really disappointed that animals touched by an Avenger are somehow more adoptable than others.

"It was a fucking Hydra lab," Bucky grits out. "They were stealing people's pets and experimenting on them--how fucking sick is that? We shut the place down," he says, which Steve hears as 'we killed those assholes but good', "and Natasha called Fury to get the cats checked out. We had a team of scientists there in no time, so I guess Fury's still got some irons in the fire or something."

Or else Fury made a few connections on the spot. Steve nods. Fury's not the only one who gives Natasha whatever she wants when she takes a personal interest in something.

Bucky shrugs. "Yeah, well. Hydra wasn't experimenting with diseases, at least, but we still had to put some down. And either not all of the cats came from town, or maybe some people just didn't feel like claiming them," Bucky says, upper lip curling, "but not everybody got to go home. So we brought the rest back with us."

Steve starts. Tony may actually have been joking about the dog, but still, that was _dog_. Singular. "Just how many cats are we talking about?"

"I dunno. A bunch? Natasha's got the rest. This little guy just decided he was mine," Bucky says uncertainly, glancing down at the kitten conked out in his arms with a baffled smile.

Not that Steve had been planning to argue, but if Tony decides he's not a cat person, well, there are other places to live. Not that he thinks it's going to be a problem. Even Tony's not crazy enough to argue with Natasha.

"What's his name?" Steve asks, carefully stroking the kitten's head with the pad of his index finger. He always forgets how _tiny_ they are, even more so now that he's bigger himself.

"Menes," Bucky says with a grin of pure relief. "You want to hold him?" he asks.

Steve hears, 'Bond with my strange, furry child, human.' He may not be able to understand Charlie, but he speaks fluent Bucky.

He holds out his hands. "Sure."

***

Natasha wakes to the unpleasant sensation of being immobilized and the highly pleasant sensations of warmth and purring. She opens one eye.

She's completely surrounded by cats.

The chubby grey with the short, plush fur of a stuffed animal has curled up on her pillow, nestled all along her neck and shoulder, purring in her ear. At this range it's thunderous. Oddly soothing, as well. Two tabbies and a calico are pressed close at waist, thigh and calf along her right side, and her left has acquired a solid wall of torties. On her stomach an orange cat sits like a furry loaf, eyes closed, head drooped.

She sucks in a slow breath and clears her sleep-roughened throat. The cats' ears twitch, but no one seems inclined to move. That...is going to be problematic. In another twenty minutes or so.

Turning her head, she rubs her cheek against velvety fur and hears the cat's purr redouble.

***

The cats, Natasha decides, are interesting. They lounge where they please, draping themselves over the furniture and collecting at the floor-to-ceiling windows to watch the traffic boiling like ants below. They disappear sometimes, though she keeps her floor so spartan, she can't imagine where they're hiding. Professionally, she's jealous. Personally, she's content to let them be. After weeks or months in a wire cage, the option to vanish must be a comforting one.

She keeps waiting for Tony to crack a crazy cat lady joke, but Tony's been distracted with a project for weeks. She's not sure he even notices the cats, even when one sneaks onto the elevator with her and follows her down to the workshop. It rubs against his legs, and he absently reaches down to pet it, but he's talking a mile a minute about Star Trek of all things, and she's not sure he even realizes what he's doing.

"So," she cuts in, mindful of her promise to Pepper to keep Tony from becoming one with his workbench while Pepper is gone. "You're coming up for dinner, right? Because I can send Bruce down to fetch you if I have to."

"What? Oh--Bruce! Just the guy I need to talk to! Great idea! Uh, whatever it is," he says as he bounces to his feet, neatly avoiding tripping over the cat, "hold that thought. I'll be _right_ back."

Natasha smirks. Well, that was easy. They'll just be having dinner on Bruce's floor is all.

***

Bruce isn't quite sure what to make of the cats. They're Natasha's, he thinks, only two tabby girls and an orange-and-white tom have migrated mysteriously upward since she and Bucky brought them home. When he tries to let Natasha know where they are--she'll come get them, of course--she just smiles and says JARVIS can order him any supplies he needs.

It's...really not a good idea. Cats get into things. They knock things over and cause unexpected commotions. They unerringly pick the one person in the room who is allergic or terrified or really just generally unsafe and make a beeline for his lap, purring like little furry chainsaws and going boneless when he tries to gingerly lift them off. The orange cat is especially shameless, curling up beside him on the couch and then rolling over to show off his white belly, arms stretched out straight over his head in blatant invitation.

Bruce is too wary to fall for that tactic, but then he stupidly picks up a book and his hand just goes wandering.

The orange cat's purr vibrates strongly under Bruce's palm as it curls around the delicate bones of the big tom's chest.

Well. Maybe he can risk it if he's careful. Very, very careful.

But as he finds out, waking for the second time from the same nightmare, pajamas lying in shreds around him and three cats curled into his suddenly-diminished lap, the Other Guy likes cats too.

***

Clint looks at the eerily identical tortoiseshells peering down at him from the top of the fridge and makes a face. "Twins? Aww, cats, no."

***

"You named them what?" Sam asks, nonplussed.

"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," Clint says between mouthfuls of Sam's leftover Chinese, eaten cold, straight out of the white takeout box. "There's this movie--Tim Roth, Gary Oldman, _Richard Dreyfuss_ , okay--"

"Movie night?" Sam asks, wincing as the cat in his arms starts _kneading_ his arm, sharp little claws and all. There's no way he's calling this little tortie Hamlet. Ophelia, on the other hand....

Clint grins, stretching his legs out and sinking further back into the couch. "Movie night."

***

Pepper glances up from her tablet with a frown. Did she just see a cat? On the office level?

She stops in the middle of the foyer and looks around, but no one's exclaiming about loose animals or cooing furtively, trying not to get caught. She knows about the sudden influx of pets, of course. Frankly she's surprised Tony hasn't been complaining about his lack of inclusion, even though she'll be the one who ends up taking care of it. Maybe she just has cats stuck in her thoughts; that sighting was clearly just her imagination.

And anyway...James and Natasha only brought back the eight...right?

***

JARVIS is aware of the intrusion as it begins--in the garage level again, this set of mercenaries either unaffiliated with or unable to learn from the last group. They're heavily-armed but well-disguised, their weapons manufactured from specialized plastics and ceramics designed to evade routine scans. Perhaps they're unaware that Sir has been consulted many times on security measures designed to hold Magneto and prevent his followers from rescuing him.

Ordinarily an attempt to penetrate the Tower's security from the garage would be unwise in the extreme, but at the moment the entity known as 'Charlie' is closeted with JARVIS' creator and Sergeant Barnes, obligingly working through a simple primer of the being's language. Due to repeated equipment failures, Sir does not appear to be making much headway with his attempt at a universal translator.

JARVIS is about to sound the alarm to assemble when the garage is filled with an unearthly wail.

The mercenaries relax only slightly when Agent Romanoff's grey cat slinks out into the open from between two cars. The creature's back is arched, and she moves in short, sharp hops, her side facing them. Vasilisa is fairly large for her species, but her attempts at intimidation are more distracting than effective, even when Dr. Banner's three slink in at her back. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern leap onto the hood of another car, growling loudly while Ophelia bounds over them and alights on the roof, but when Sergeant Barnes' kitten comes skittering out to join Vasilisa, its little black tail standing straight and tall, the mercenaries erupt with laughter.

"What the hell?" one chuckles, shaking his head. "Are they trying to kill us with cute?"

From under every car and behind every pillar, black shapes slink into the light, crouched close to the ground, eyes and teeth and open mouths as black as their inky fur.

The intruders are given no opportunity to flee. A black tide of small bodies rushes over them and bears them swiftly to the floor, crushing the mercenaries under their sheer number. There are shots, screams, but the black creatures seem unaffected. Within moments, JARVIS can no longer make out individual shapes; it might be one solid, shapeless mass, lumped up in places where a man once stood.

A black tentacle, separate from the others, pokes up through the floor beside Agent Romanoff's cat, but Vasilisa says, "Pfft" and swats at it, claws tucked in. The being known as 'Charlie', perhaps not as unaware of the intruders as it previously seemed, wiggles its tentacle with a little fillip at the end like the shrug of a cat's tail and retreats once more. Presumably the cats need no assistance.

JARVIS suspects he really should report this. He doubts very much it will change the opinions of the cats'... _owners_ , considering their relationship with their other guest, and it would certainly be the wise thing to do.

Vasilisa looks square at the nearest camera and begins washing her left paw, eyes fixed on his-by-proxy, unblinking.

Well. They do seem...benevolent, after a fashion. Helpful, at the very least. Perhaps, as with Charlie, he might reserve judgment for a time.

It's certainly a point in their favor that they leave no mess to speak of behind.

***

Bucky frowns at the still-full bowl, but Menes just attacks his bootlaces, his little belly as taut as ever as he rolls all the way over, swiping upside-down at Bucky's feet before hopping up and dashing off. He's definitely not lacking for energy, that's for sure.

"Hey, Steve?" Bucky calls, topping off the water bowl, which _does_ need it. That's a relief.

"Yeah?" Steve shouts back from his spot by the windows in the other room. The scratch of his pencil across his sketchpad briefly stills.

"Have you been sneaking Menes treats again?"

"No?"

He's tempted to call bullshit, but Steve sounds confused, not innocent. He knows better to trust innocence coming out of _that_ mouth.

Maybe it's time for a trip to the vet. Can you get worming pills over the counter? Maybe he'll ask JARVIS.

He can't imagine where else the little guy is getting food from, but it's been two days.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently my "awwww, team, no" feels had to go somewhere.

"Steve," Bucky says calmly. "I want you to put the knife down and back away slowly."

"I'd do what he says, Rogers," Tony calls from the next room. Newsprint rustles dramatically. "And who the hell brought in a paper?"

"That would be mine," Steve replies, rolling his eyes. The corners of his mouth turn up despite his best attempts at maintaining a stoic scowl. "And I've been on my own for years, Buck. I do know how to cook now."

Bucky snorts. The kitchen's still in one piece, but he doubts that will last if he lets Steve hang around much longer. It's not that Steve _can't_ cook. He can cook a _little_. Problem is, that gives him ideas. Simple things like toast and pancakes he can manage, but when he starts improvising, the wise man takes cover. Having the entire team over for breakfast is _not_ the time for Steve to let his inner Julia Child loose on an unsuspecting world.

"Uh-huh," Bucky says, holding out a hand. "Knife. Please. You can set the table."

"Morning, Steve," Bruce says as he slips past on his way to the sink, eying Steve's defeated slouch curiously. "Bucky."

"Morning," Steve and Bucky reply in unison as Bruce rolls up his sleeves and begins to wash his hands.

Steve's eyes narrow. "Are you here to help cook?"

Bruce's brows arch mildly as he glances back and forth between them. "Uh...yes?"

Tony snickers from the couch. "Et tu, Brucey?" Pepper hits him.

"Thanks, Pepper!" Bucky calls as Steve slaps the knife into his hand, grumbling under his breath. It's for the greater good, but he'll make it up to Steve anyway. Later. When they have the place to themselves.

He's not actually sure when Natasha and Clint show up, not that he'll admit it. He's aware enough to reach over without looking, just in time to smack Clint's hand before he can filch half the bacon off the platter.

"Ow! How did you even know I was here?"

Natasha snorts. Bucky tries hard not to preen. From anyone else, it'd make him leery, but it's good to know Natalia--Natasha--still has a high opinion of his skills.

As breakfasts go, it's nice. Tony makes a huge deal out of bringing the newspaper to the table and spreading it out as wide as possible, pages and elbows overflowing into Steve's space until Steve cracks and takes it from him. Bruce and Pepper talk shop--something about a fundraiser for a children's hospital--while Clint amuses himself by drinking Tony's coffee while Tony's still hidden behind the paper and stealing his toast after Steve raises the stakes.

When Menes comes trotting out of the bedroom at last, trilling curiously at the commotion, Natasha leans down to offer him a bit of bacon, blithely ignoring Bucky's chiding stare.

Tony perks up at the sound, frowning. "Is that a cat? When did you get a cat? I thought you were getting a dog."

"Pfft," Bucky says, because why the hell would he want a dog? He already lives with a two-legged Golden Retriever.

He's not expecting Tony to sit up straight, eyes wide. "Jesus, you speak cat now? Did you hear that? Tell me you guys heard that."

Bucky almost buys the surprised act, except that Tony looks honestly surprised. Pepper shakes her head with the same wry smile Bucky knows he gets himself when he catches Menes climbing the curtains or attacking Steve's shoes. The little monster is just too cute to scold. "Cats've been around for a month already," Bucky says with a snort.

This time Tony's surprise is genuine. "Cats? As in plural? What?" he adds as the entire table trades glances. "Is there a cat conspiracy I should know about? A cat uprising? _Tell_ me these aren't Miskatonic cats."

"Uh...they're mission cats," Bucky says uncertainly. "From that place in--"

"Don't say Maine!" Tony blurts.

"Massachusetts."

Tony groans. "Almost as bad."

Bucky frowns. "They're just cats," he says, leaning over to scoop up Menes, who's licking his chops, bacon already scarfed. He's gotten a little bigger, but he's still more kitten than tom, was probably way too young to be taken from his mother when Bucky brought him home. Tony squints at the little black furball when Bucky holds him up for inspection, squeezes one eye closed, and shakes his head.

"Nope. That's some supernatural levels of cuteness there, Barnes. I call foul."

"Deal," Bucky tells him firmly, setting Menes back down on the floor with another, bigger piece of bacon. It's his damn cat. He can spoil him if he wants to.

" _Pardon me for interrupting_ ," JARVIS says before Tony can rise to that challenge, " _but Thor appears to be approaching the entrance to the Tower. On foot_ ," he adds, making Bucky wonder what else he'd be approaching on. He's heard of Thor before this, sure, but now that he knows hidden tentacles are a thing, he figures he might want to keep an open mind.

"Huh," Tony says, perplexed. Right, now Bucky's really curious. "Well, invite him--oh, shit. He doesn't know about--right. Everybody stay put," Tony orders, pushing back his chair. "I'll go get Thor and bring him up here. _Keep You-Know-Who occupied_ ," he adds firmly, staring hard into Bucky's eyes before making long strides towards the elevator.

Bucky stares after him for a moment, then turns to the others. "What? Does he want me to fight Voldemort or something?"

Clint chokes on his orange juice, so, well, win.

Steve shakes his head, smiling. "Uh, Charlie?" he calls, glancing up at the ceiling, the same as he does for JARVIS about half the time. "Tony's bringing up a friend. Can you wait until they get here to introduce yourself?"

A lone tentacle pokes through the ceiling over the dining table, the tip curling up like a question mark. _Of course!_ Charlie says brightly. He's always happy to meet new people, although after the incident with Hill, he's become more restrained in his enthusiasm. Sure enough, his limb curls in on itself a moment later. _Erm...will I scare this one too badly?_

Bucky opens his mouth to spill a reassurance before common sense catches up. "Uh...I don't know. I've never met the guy. But Thor doesn't sound like someone who's easily startled," he says, looking to the others for confirmation.

Clint looks like he's regretting stealing Tony's breakfast, one fist pressed to his mouth, and Bruce is working his jaw in an attempt to get his ears to pop. Natasha shrugs; if Charlie's voice hits her funny like it does the others, she never lets it show. "Thor's seen more than we realize, I'm sure. And with that All-Speech of his," she adds, glancing up at Charlie with a tiny smile, "you might just have someone new to talk to."

Two more limbs push through the ceiling, all three perking curiously. _All-Speech? Is your friend a--_

Bucky frowns. He didn't quite catch that one, and what he did catch didn't make sense. "A tree what now?" Tree walker? Spinner? Shaper? "Uh...he's Asgardian, I think."

Bruce tilts his head thoughtfully, looking up at Charlie. "Tree? Do you mean the World Tree?"

Huh. So maybe 'walker' did make sense.

Charlie's about to answer when the elevator doors swish open, Tony returning in record time. He must've run once he hit the lobby.

The man who exits the elevator half a pace behind him is enormous, even bigger than Steve, with shoulders that ought to be hitched to a plow and arms that could bend the plow in half. While they're on the subject of being outdone, his hair is even longer than Bucky's, bright gold, and he has the sort of open, friendly face that Bucky hasn't been able to call his own since 1943.

"Hey, everybody," Tony calls cheerfully, like he's actually bringing them a surprise. "Thor's back! And on foot, which is...weird. Did you leave the real hammer at home? Can't be too careful when you're on vacation, especially in these off-season worlds."

Thor shoots Tony a lopsided smile, patient with his teasing like few others Bucky has seen. "I hired a vehicle to bring me here from the airport."

"The _airport_ ," Tony echoes, scandalized. "Wait, you were already on Earth?"

Thor's smile stretches into a grin, his whole face lighting up in memory. "Indeed I was. I was visiting with--"

Though Thor had glanced at the rest of them with a friendly enough nod as he came in, Tony's been keeping most of Thor's attention centered on him. It isn't until Thor looks over again to share his happiness with everyone that he notices the cluster of black tentacles hanging over the table, their tips curled like attentive cobras facing his way.

All at once, the affable cheer is gone from Thor's expression. He doesn't quite drop into a fighting stance, but his hand shifts to hover over the hammer hanging at his hip. Cool wariness enters his eyes, but his voice is even when he speaks. "Old One," he says neutrally.

 _Asgardian_ , Charlie replies. That's what Bucky's going to go with, anyway; at any rate, it doesn't sound like an insult. Charlie's funny about greetings as it is, tends to mirror back the way he's addressed. Bucky's pretty sure it's because human manners are a foreign concept Charlie's doing his damnedest to get right.

Thor's eyes flick from Charlie to the team gathered around the breakfast table, sliding over to Tony as his brows crease thoughtfully. When he glances back at Charlie, he stands a little looser, some of the wariness ebbing from tensed shoulders. "And...may I ask who I have the pleasure of addressing?"

Bucky decides then and there that he likes the guy. He hadn't been too sure about rubbing shoulders with an alien prince when Steve first mentioned their missing teammate, but even when he puts on his best manners, instead of turning into His Royal Highness of Snootyville, Thor just goes all _polite_. Bucky's got no problem with polite. He lives with Steve, doesn't he? And he has vague, distant memories of being raised a gentleman.

Charlie gives Thor the same name he gave Bucky the first time he'd asked, only to wave a lazy coil at Thor's grimace. _But even your tongue would have trouble with that, I think. Fav--_

"Charlie," Bucky offers quickly before Charlie can finish that thought. He does not need Charlie tossing around his embarrassing nickname to someone who can actually understand him. Not if it can be helped. "Uh, we call him Charlie, thanks."

"Oh, right," Steve pipes up when Thor's attention shifts to Bucky. "Thor, this is Bucky. He's my partner," he adds, flushing a little, because while they've agreed on the label--wasn't hard, considering that it's been accurate in one sense or another for most of their lives--it's the first time Steve's actually had to tell someone who didn't pick it up through observation or osmosis.

"Truly?" Thor asks, brows shooting up. Before Bucky can ask what _that's_ supposed to mean, Thor lights up with the same brilliant grin as before, his unreserved happiness equally unselfish. "Congratulations, my friends! I heard from Jane that there'd been trouble before I arrived and that you were looking for an old friend," he adds, glancing from Steve to Bucky and back again. "I'd actually come to offer my help."

Okay, now Bucky really likes the guy. Sure, Thor's admitting he would cheerfully have joined a manhunt, but Bucky's guessing he put whoever it is that makes him smile like that on the backburner just to come bail out a friend. That's some Grade-A class in Bucky's book.

"Thanks, Thor," Steve says with his 'aw, shucks' face on, touched and embarrassed to show it. "But, uh, it looks like I found him."

"Wait, who found who again?" Bucky asks archly, even though he's completely in agreement with Steve. It wasn't exactly Bucky who'd shown up on Steve's doorstep that night, no matter what Steve likes to tell himself.

Steve elbows him with a grin. "Bucky and I go way back," he explains to Thor, who watches them with a smile.

"Then I'm glad you've found one another again. But your...new friend," Thor says diplomatically, looking up at Charlie again. "What brings a Great Old One to Avengers Tower?"

"Ha," Tony mutters, "I _knew_ it!"

Steve shakes his head. "Charlie's a friend of Bucky's, so when they ran into each other again, Charlie followed him back."

 _I thought there would be spawnlings_ , Charlie mourns, tentacles drooping despondently. _Human biology is terrible. Just terrible_.

"Ah...Aesir biology isn't much better," Thor commiserates, trying manfully not to laugh. "Jotun biology, now...."

"Is he talking about spawning again?" Tony interrupts, turning from Thor to Charlie. "You're talking about spawning again, aren't you. I know Barnes gave you the Talk--you did give him the Talk, right Barnes?"

"Nice save," Steve grumbles.

"So you've got to know you're barking up the wrong tree there, unless you start pushing for adoption, or, like...surrogacy, which...okay, I think I'm just going to leave that there."

Charlie perks up instantly. _Surrogacy? I was going to ask if your mate wanted to evolve_ , Charlie admits, swiveling his tentacles towards Bucky, _but I'm sure my sister would be happy to--_

"Wait, hold it, stop!" Bucky insists, flinging his hands up and narrowly missing knocking over his coffee. "I am _not_ getting friendly with Shirley just because you want grandkids!"

" _Shirley_?" Steve's voice climbs an octave and cracks, his jaw dropping before he snaps it shut.

"He said 'evolve'," Tony points out, narrow-eyed. "I _know_ that one. Steve, I _think_ the in-laws have plans for you, just so you know."

Thor shakes his head slowly. "Grandchildren?"

Bucky groans. And he'd thought having his nickname get out would be mortifying.

Steve pulls himself together enough to pat Bucky's shoulder and finds a smile for Thor. "It's a long story."

***

Though Thor knows his world must seem filled with wonders to his Midgardian friends, he could say the same of their own. A wider experience of the realms reachable through the Bifrost doesn't mean he's seen all there is to see; he's only scratched the surface of what the universe has to show him. Finding one of the oldest of beings living in harmony with humans whose minds could be crushed at the barest touch is not the strangest thing he's seen.

Learning the Old One has adopted a human, altered that human's being but not his self, and is vocally disappointed not to have spawn to spoil...that may well be the strangest thing he's even _heard_ of. And he grew up with Loki, who had a story for everything, each more outrageous than the last.

"So you're not actually related," Thor says, couching it as a statement. He's been listening, after all. It's just--

"Nah," Barnes says with a shrug, smiling up at Charlie when the Old One gives a saddened sigh. "The tentacles are more like a friendship bracelet."

Thor grins despite himself. "You've met Darcy?"

He wants to be wary of Barnes, but it's impossible. Barnes has the eyes of a soldier left too long in the fight, but Thor's home is full of those. Asgard's battles are more terrible than his friends probably realize; Thor has worn those eyes himself, one century or another. He knows how to talk to a man like James Barnes.

But there are the strange new limbs he's been told of as if they hope to shock him, the ease with which Barnes endures a voice it takes all of Thor's will to bear without shuddering, the casual way he pats a stray tentacle or bats away a teasing poke in the side. Only Stark and Banner's increasingly excited theories on how Barnes' changed state interacts with his basic humanity convinces Thor that there's nothing more sinister going on.

Sinister is not the word Thor would use to describe Barnes. He seems a quiet man--his smiles are small, his voice soft--but a good one. If he were to judge the man by the love he's earned and the friends he's won, he'd have to say Barnes is a very good man indeed. He finds that hard to reconcile with the fact that Barnes has brought one of the most dangerous beings in the cosmos, one that could destroy them all in an instant, right into the heart of their defenses.

To be fair, the Old One isn't what Thor expects either.

Charlie, as he lets them call him, answers to the name cheerfully, without titles. There are no rites, no reverence. He jests and sports with them as much as he's able, passing messages through Barnes, who translates with surprising accuracy, though some of his phrasings speak much of his own experience. But who's to say his version isn't the truer one? Barnes and the Old One share an obvious fondness, and Thor's understanding is likely colored by his own caution.

There is only one question he truly needs answered, and he waits until the impromptu revels to celebrate his return have broken apart to ask. The open, airy space he's led to by the delightful JARVIS--another wonder, though Stark would be unbearably smug were he to hear it from Thor--feels empty without Jane at his side. He's grateful to have the distraction from missing her.

"Old One?" he asks, knowing from what the others have said that their newest houseguest has permeated the tower. Sure enough, a tangle of black tentacles drop from the ceiling by the windows, not so close as to make him feel loomed over and not in the least blocking his path to the door.

 _You can call me what the others do,_ he's informed with a sinuous shrug of rippling limbs that makes the backs of his eyes sing with strain. It's become more tolerable as the hours wear on. Thor has looked over the edge of the Bifrost into Ginnungagap; his mind is a little more prepared than most. _I don't mind. It's Favorite's name for me._

Thor arches his brows, certain for a moment that his All-Speech has failed him at last. "Favorite," he echoes, then feels like a fool when he realizes Charlie can only mean one person. "You mean Barnes?"

 _Names don't translate as well as truths,_ Charlie replies simply.

Thor smiles, a quiet chuckle escaping him. _Favorite_. He wonders if Barnes knows the honor he's being paid and decides that he does--and is thoroughly embarrassed by it, much the same as Thor had been when his mother would call him something undignified in front of his friends.

"Fair enough," he says. The tentacles poised in his direction curl at their tips like the tilt of a curious head. It's fascinating to think that a being so old could be as inquisitive about Thor as Thor is about him. "You seem to be settling in well here. I confess, it's not what I would have expected had I known you were here before I arrived." That in itself is curious; though Heimdall has no means of contacting him directly from his post, he could have sent a messenger. Either the Old One is hiding his presence, or Heimdall has decided he isn't a threat. It would be just like him to leave Thor to muddle through that discovery on his own.

 _You're wondering why I haven't harmed your friends?_ There's a touch of amusement in Charlie's voice, mostly buried under resignation.

"I'm wondering why you didn't devour Barnes when you met," Thor replies candidly. If he enrages the Old One, he'll at least have discovered the boundaries of the being's patience, whether his oddly innocent enthusiasm is for his new friends or his new pets.

Charlie sighs, tentacles drooping fractionally. _Humans are fragile_ , he explains, subdued. _Most mortals are. They break every time, but I've gotten better at putting them back together. It just doesn't_ help. _Most of the time_ , he corrects himself, one coil twisting tiredly. _It's kinder to take them apart altogether. Favorite...he never quite fractured, not all the way. He had something he wouldn't let go of the whole time I was knitting him up. After he decided I wasn't going to eat him_ , he says with a huff, or a laugh, or a friendly growl, amusement bubbling over, _he chose not to be afraid. And he never asks for anything. Not from us or of us._

 _Us_. That...sounds ominous, though it's clear his friends have survived meeting Charlie's kin quite handily. He also hears what Charlie doesn't outright say, what may be confusing the Old One even yet. "I suspect the only thing he wanted was beyond your power to give," he says, thinking of that first meeting down in the dark, where most men would have broken, or begged for their lives, or tried to bargain for gifts. He has only to watch Barnes and Steve together to know why Barnes had had nothing left for which to ask.

 _It wasn't, though_ , Charlie admits, the knotting twist of his limbs uncertain. Guilty, almost. _If Favorite hadn't been so sure_ his _favorite was already devoured--if he hadn't been_ very _certain he didn't want me to fetch his mate despite that--I would have done it._

"And then Hydra would have had both of them." From what he's learned of Hydra, the very thought is chilling.

Charlie's tentacles bob in what can only be meant as a nod. _He didn't know he wasn't happy then, but he seems happier now...doesn't he?_

Just as he can't bring himself to remain wary of Barnes, he finds it hard to see the monster he's been warned about in the face of Charlie's anxious concern. "We've only just met," he reminds Charlie kindly, "but yes. He and Steve seem very happy."

 _Mm. Then giving only what he asked was the right thing to do_. Charlie sighs. _I do try not to push_ , he says wistfully.

"I'm certain they appreciate the consideration."

 _It's just that they'd make such lovely spawnling tenders_ , bursts out of Charlie like he simply can't help himself.

Thor goes to prodigious lengths not to laugh, but he can't contain his grin. "I'm sure my brother would agree."

***

Bucky wakes by stages, rising slowly from the comforting, black murk of a dreamless sleep, something he only does anymore when he knows right down to his bones that he's safe. He's not surprised at all to find himself wrapped around Steve, his face mashed into Steve's armpit, his arms and legs and--huh--several other limbs wound around Steve's warm bulk. He should probably do something about the tentacles--that's going to be weird to wake up to--but before he can coax them into retracting, Steve's phone rings.

Bucky tries not to freeze too obviously when Steve wakes, only instead of panicking or flailing his way out of Bucky's clingy hold, he reaches blindly for the bedside table, humming something pleased as the tentacle wrapped around his wrist slides up his arm without ever fully unwinding. "Rogers," he rasps sleepily into the phone, rolling his head to nuzzle contentedly into Bucky's hair.

Beneath his cheek, Bucky can feel the instant Steve wakes up fully, but the arm wrapped around him only tightens. The sudden tension thrumming below Steve's skin is nothing to do with him. "Wait, they what? Why are we only hearing about this now?"

" _SHIELD's containment archive is more extensive than you realize, Steve_." That's Hill's voice, and Bucky shifts to watch Steve's face, where Bucky's own budding alarm has already taken root. " _They've been fighting like cats and dogs out there over who gets to pick over the carcass. It's made it a little difficult to get an inventory done._ "

"But Loki's scepter?" Steve squeezes the phone a little too tightly until Bucky runs a soothing hand down his side. It's his left hand, but Steve's never minded that. "And now Hydra's got it. Great. Do we at least have a lead on getting it back?"

Bucky tunes that part out. He doesn't know much about Loki or his toys, but he knows enough. Mind control is not something he wants to mess with, but if there's going to be a mission, he's in. At least Thor had agreed to stay for breakfast; maybe they can get his help on this one. If it's got anything to do with his brother, he'll probably volunteer.

He can just about feel Steve's hesitation as he disconnects the call and decides to head that off at the pass. "When do we leave?"

"As soon as we get everyone briefed." He doesn't ask if Bucky's sure; Bucky's finally hammered it into that stubborn skull that Steve's not going anywhere he won't follow.

"Hn," Bucky grunts, knowing they have to get up and wondering a little why Steve hasn't rolled him off yet. The time they get to just be themselves is always too short. "We got time for breakfast?"

"You gonna let me help cook?" Steve counters.

Bucky chuckles. "Yeah, sure. Let's blow up all the things."

Steve smacks him across the back of the head, but lightly, his fingers getting tangled in Bucky's hair for a lazy few minutes until they finally break apart to start the day.


	10. Chapter 10

Going back to the ice and snow, the bone-shaking clamor of gunfire and mortars, surrounded by shouts and screams in a tongue so familiar he needs no translation--it ought to be setting Bucky's teeth on edge, but he's filled with exhilaration instead. He's not alone this time, isn't broken and bleeding, isn't muzzled, has no orders to speak of. He's got _goals_ \--that fortress on the hill being one of them--and it's good to have goals.

Good to have friends, too. When he looks up from leapfrogging Steve on their bikes just in time to watch Stark bounce off an energy field like a bullet pinging off Steve's shield, no one barks a rebuke for his distraction. And when Steve-- _Steve_ \--scolds Stark for swearing, the helpless, strangled laugh that escapes him doesn't send him into a panic, certain he's going to be punished.

"'Language'?" he echoes incredulously as he ramps his bike over a snow pile and comes down right on top of three Hydra soldiers, kicking the bike into a spin that takes their legs out from under them. He's heard Steve cuss like a stevedore over tangled extension cords and burnt waffles and once a papercut that was gone in seconds, which was just hilarious. He knows exactly what this is, though. "You forget Carter isn't listening in this time?"

"I know," Steve groans, losing the bike because that idiot isn't happy until he can face the world like a punk kid from Brooklyn, with nothing but his fists and his attitude. "It just slipped out.

"JARVIS," he changes the subject while Bucky's still cackling at him shamelessly, "what's the view from upstairs?"

" _The central building is protected by some kind of energy shield. Strucker's technology is well beyond any other Hydra base we've taken_."

"Loki's scepter must be here," Thor says, relieved. This is hardly the first base they've hit since getting the word from Hill, and the dead ends have been wearing on all of them. "Strucker couldn't mount this defense without it."

"Energy shield, huh?" Bucky asks, ditching his own bike--in one piece--near Steve. Share and share alike, like his ma used to say. He catches the shield as it slices past, spins in place and shatters the helm of an armored soldier with the edge of it, and flicks the shield back to Steve's waiting hand. "Think someone could give me a lift up there?"

"Buck--" Steve starts, going full mother hen in the middle of punching some goon in the face.

Bucky grins. "Relax, Cap. We practiced this, remember?"

"Coming in for a pickup," Tony says over the comms, voice tight from a hushed conversation with JARVIS regarding the city at the base of the fortress. "JARVIS, send in the Iron Legion."

Stark wastes no time in getting there. Snow sprays up from his boot thrusters when he lands, coming up from his crouch with his arms outstretched. "Carry you over the threshold?" he offers, smirk audible.

Bucky flicks the side of Stark's helmet with the fingers of his left hand, smirking at Stark's amplified squawk of protest. "Better use those to steer with, Tin Man," he says, planting his left foot on Tony's right boot and wrapping his left arm around the suit. "You know Cap's going to get out the shotgun if he thinks you ain't treating me right."

When he glances over, the set of Steve's mouth is still scared, but now there's a hint of a smile as well.

"Tin Man," Tony scoffs as they take off. "I'll have you know, I _do_ have a heart. Pepper had it mounted. It's sitting on my desk right now."

"Uh-huh. How close can you get me to the roof?"

"What, you don't want me to drop you from a great height without a parachute?"

"Don't _remind_ him," Steve groans over the comms.

Bucky snorts. "Do I look like Captain America to you?"

Like he's going to _forget_.

They're a good fifty feet from the rooftop when Tony pulls up in a slightly wobbly hover, pulled off-balance just a hair from the unaccustomed weight on his right side. "You got enough room to work?" Tony asks, holding steady even as energy fire burns past them.

"Can you get me a visual?" Bucky asks, gauging the drop. Fifty feet is nothing. Fifty feet when he's not sure where the barrier starts is a little more exciting.

Tony fires off a repulsor blast that lights up the air about twenty feet down, a lattice of light spreading like an ink stain before it fades away.

"Any other wishes you'd like granted?"

"Give me the number of that pizza place from last week," Bucky says, leaning away from Stark, "and we'll call it good."

He steps off in the next second, tucking himself up like a cannonball, and feels a mass of tentacles come bursting painlessly through the meat and skin of his back. They've tried counting them in the lab, but it's never the same number: he has exactly as many as he needs at any given time. Right now he needs enough to wrap himself up completely, and he lets himself go limp as they blot out every scrap of light.

The energy field is a brief ripple of warmth, like walking through a sunbeam in a cold room. It doesn't stop him, doesn't even hurt as he falls straight through it.

The moment he's clear, he straightens back out again, tentacles unraveling from their tight-knit ball and retracting once more. He can fight with them just fine, but he likes keeping them in reserve. The shock of seeing them for the first time does half his work for him when the enemy isn't expecting it.

Things get a little hectic after that, what with the soldiers, and Tony blowing up something under the building, and more soldiers. Someone yells something about Winter Soldier Protocol and starts screaming at him in Russian over the PA, but he doesn't really pay it any attention until the same frantic voice bleats, " _It's not working--evacuate! Evacuate the building_!"

He's pretty sure there's something important in that, but he's a little busy trying to rendezvous with Tony before he--

Bursting into Strucker's lab, Bucky takes a swift look around and heaves a frustrated sigh when he finds nothing but a collection of computers, an empty Iron Man suit standing guard, and a hidden passageway standing wide open. "Goddamn it, Stark," he mutters. The idiot's as bad as Steve is about keeping hold of his weapons.

He makes his way cautiously down the stairs, not expecting the size of the room at the bottom. It's huge, housing more computers and an assembly line of sorts for the dismantled robots scattered across worktables and gathered into haphazard piles. Hanging from the ceiling like the ugliest mobile ever is one of those creepy space whales from the Battle of New York; how they got the thing down the stairs in the first place is a mystery.

Tony's there too, but he looks just slightly off: face pale and slightly waxen, eyes staring but fixed on nothing. "Iron Man?" he asks, following mission protocol. "Stark?" he tries again when he gets no response at all, not even a blink.

Tony throws out a hand just as Bucky becomes aware of something hovering just beside his head, too close, and a flicker of light, a _spark_ \--

The girl lets loose with a startled shriek when he jerks his hand up fast and catches her wrist--in his right hand, his right, or he'd have crushed her bones before he could stop himself. Christ, she's just a kid--too skinny and too pale, with eyes too big for her face, but she whips her other hand up fast and--

"Wanda!" someone shouts from the top of the stairs, blurring to meet them just as Tony's gauntlet comes streaking down to rejoin its user.

The two collide with a clanging thump, the boy--another kid?--going down like a ton of bricks, eyes rolling back.

"Pietro!" the girl cries, tugging against Bucky's hold and trying again with the hand and the lights and--

Bucky frowns. She's in his _head_. And that's bad, because he can feel her rooting around, scrabbling for the right kind of hook, but she's way too scared to be careful. "Kid, I don't know what you think you're doing," he warns, "but you probably want to get out of there before you see something you'll regret."

Too late. She jerks hard in his grip and then freezes, her already pale face going grey as a choked, hurt sound tears itself from her throat. He's not sure what does it, all the people he's killed or hell, maybe Charlie, but then she snatches her free hand back and tries to _hide_ it, shame and guilt and horror chasing each other across her face.

He doesn't let up on his grip, but he holds her arm a little more carefully. If she can still be shocked by Hydra's methods, maybe there's hope for her yet.

"Whoa," Tony says abruptly, staring at Bucky in wary surprise, belatedly realizing he's not alone. "What...just happened here?"

The girl's eyes are terrified, pleading. It's a look he's seen more times than he can count, but this time he has a choice.

He hunches a shoulder, smiling faintly as he watches fear morph slowly into hope. "You got me," he says, holding the girl's eyes. "I'm just here for the post-mission revels."

The girl--Wanda?--relaxes slowly, still casting anxious looks at the other kid but no longer trying to pull free. It's a pretty sure bet she did something to Tony's head too, and Bucky just hopes it wasn't anything too nasty, or that she succeeded with Stark about as well as she did with him. He's not going to bet on it, but with any luck he can talk her around, get her to fess up or maybe fix whatever she's done. Natasha will get it out of her if he can't, he's got no doubt about that, but he'd rather he succeeded.

If he gets the chance to spare someone, help them instead of hurting them, he's going to take it.

***

There's a calico cat keeping Thor company as he dresses for his own farewell feast. He's not entirely certain how she keeps getting in; the night he met Charlie for the first time, he'd walked into the bedroom afterwards and found her sitting at the foot of his bed, tail-tip flicking irritably. "Mow," she'd said shortly, shooting him a deeply unimpressed look. Though his All-Speech is worthless where the beast tongues are concerned, he'd understood immediately that he was _late_.

She'd sniffed his fingers when he offered them and had magnanimously accepted skritches in apology. He has no idea where she goes or who feeds her when he's not here, but JARVIS has informed him that the cats look after themselves.

Tonight Bygul is on the bed again, purring meditatively with her eyes closed, half-asleep already as he pauses to stroke her head. He should bring Jane to the tower someday; she'd like the cats. She'd be altogether too curious about Charlie, though. It's a little worrisome to contemplate.

There's never any formality to Stark's revels, so by the time Thor shows up, most of the guests have already arrived. Many are unfamiliar, but he recognizes a few faces in the crowd: some of the assistants from Medical, the team that sees to the Quinjet between missions, the hardworking crew that follows in their wake to process prisoners and assess the damages. There's a collection of grizzled warriors by the bar, perhaps Wilson's comrades from the gatherings of veterans he attends. Then again, they could be friends of Steve's; they are his contemporaries, after all.

Barnes is alone for once when Thor happens upon him, Steve having slipped away to regale Wilson with the tale of their last mission. Somehow Barnes has found a quiet corner, sitting all but unnoticed with a beer and a thoughtful expression, but he looks up with a smile when Thor approaches.

"Hey. Looking forward to going home?" Barnes asks with a touch of wistfulness he can't contain.

He could have answered that easily once. Nowadays he finds himself torn. "Looking forward to seeing the scepter safely locked away. But there are many things I'll miss about your world."

"Jane, right?" Barnes asks in friendly commiseration.

"Jane," Thor agrees. He's not sure where she is tonight, her schedule has grown so busy. If she were close enough to visit, he knows she'd be here. Their time together is always too short--will always be too short. It's a fact he tries not to think about.

"Hey, so...meant to say this earlier," Barnes says with unaccustomed hesitance, "but thanks. For showing up to help Steve," he clarifies at Thor's puzzled frown. "I know you'd rather have spent the time with your girl, but it means a lot to know that he's had good people watching his back."

"It was my pleasure," Thor assures him in all sincerity. Of course he misses Jane, but he'd hardly be worthy of her if he could leave a friend to fend for himself.

"Yeah, well." Bucky hunches a shoulder. "If there's ever anything I can do to return the favor, just say the word."

"Of course. And I thank you." Thor understands debts of honor, knows Barnes' words aren't just meaningless air.

Barnes smiles, tilting his head a little in friendly curiosity. There's a question in his eyes, but before he can ask, something across the room draws Barnes' attention. Barnes glances up unerringly to the mezzanine level, and Thor follows his eyes to find Steve at the railing, standing next to Wilson. Steve salutes Barnes with the bottle in his hand, a soft smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. The rest of the room may as well be invisible in that moment.

Thor glances sidelong at Barnes, intending to tease him a little for how besotted the pair of them still are, only to watch Barnes' face transform with a startling grin. Thor stares despite himself. It isn't that Barnes looked unhappy before, but Thor has never seen such a look bestowed so unguarded: all the fondness, joy and certainty one mortal man is capable of aimed at another.

Thor looks again at Steve, though he knows what he'll find: a face so changed by happiness, it might as well be a stranger's. He wonders now how he'd missed the quiet misery Steve wore like a second skin, how any of them had, but he suspects Steve had been unhappy so long, no one had the memory of better to tell them anything was wrong.

Thor doubts either man would appreciate him drawing attention to this change, so he nods to Steve, smiles at Bucky, and quickly changes the subject.

"How do the young ones fare? I understand they gave you their parole?"

"Well, the sister did," Bucky says with an easy shrug as he drags his eyes away from Steve, sitting back into the overstuffed cushions and resting his beer on his knee. "Her brother was still unconscious until about an hour ago. Luckily the kid's skull is almost as tough as Stark's gauntlets." He shakes his head with a quiet snort. "Probably going to let Clint talk that one around, though. They've both got some kind of bone to pick with Stark, but Clint's got a way with the stubborn ones."

"And you don't?" Thor asks, tilting his head just a little towards the mezzanine and arching a brow.

Bucky chuckles and doesn't deny it, but he drops his chin, eyes fixed on the bottle he turns slowly in his fingers. "I've got three sisters," he explains with a wry smile, knowing the tense he uses is wrong and not caring in the slightest. "If anyone had touched a hair on their heads, I'd have buried the bodies where no one could find 'em. Trust me, Clint's the better man for the job."

"I understand." The look Bucky shoots him is knowing but not judgmental. The many ways in which they're alike still surprises him now and then. "Where did they end up, by the way? The twins. I understand Stark had someplace in mind."

"Oh, that's the best part," Bucky says, grinning. "They're in the Hulk containment room. I dunno, I was expecting the place to be barren--steel walls, nothing inside to break--but it's like a throw pillow emporium threw up inside a bouncy castle."

Thor laughs. He has Darcy to thank that he understood any of that, and he's glad of it. Seeing him laugh chases the shadows from Bucky's eyes, happy to see someone else happy.

"What had you so thoughtful earlier?" Thor asks, certain now that Bucky will share if he's able.

"Those kids," Bucky admits with a sigh. "The brother's mostly just angry, but the sister--she could really be dangerous if she put her mind to it. Pun intended. I don't know what we're going to do with them if we can't get them past this thing they have with Stark."

"Did I hear my name being taken in vain?"

Thor looks up with a start, surprised he didn't notice Stark's approach. The man trails words in his wake like smoke from a torch, but tonight he's been quiet, as sober as the blacks and dark blues of his attire. The skin around his eyes looks bruised, and his voice is a touch gravelly, as if he's been talking nonstop for days. Whatever progress he and Banner have made with the scepter, it's clearly cost him some sleepless nights.

"Vain was definitely the word I was looking for," Bucky says with a solemn nod that's ruined by the smirk that follows.

Tony shakes his head. "Cold, Sergeant Winter," he chides, "very cold. You're off the Christmas card list."

"So the card that's going to be delivered to our floor is going to say 'Steve, just Steve, and only Steve'?"

"Yes. Absolutely. JARVIS? Make a note."

Bucky loses the battle with hilarity, though his laughter is mostly breath: quiet and easy to conceal, even in the midst of friends.

"Come on, Thor," Stark says with a sniff, hiding his own amusement behind narrowed eyes. "I can tell when we're not wanted."

_We?_ he nearly asks, but Bucky waves him off, and Thor's attended enough banquets to know when he's being maneuvered to impress the crowd. He'll have time to enquire further about the twins' fate before he departs.

"We can speak about their situation before I leave," Thor promises. "My people may be able to find a solution if it comes to it." They've contained...much stronger prisoners in the past. It's another thing he doesn't care to think about, the hurt still fresh in his heart. Best to leave the past in the past, take only the best parts of a sorely-missed kinship with him into the future.

"Sure," Bucky says without hesitation. His eyes have gone thoughtful again, however, and when Thor glances back a few minutes later, he finds Bucky's eyes roving the room, head slightly cocked as if listening or waiting. It's strange to see him so distracted, and Thor looks over several times while Rhodes regales them with a disconcertingly dry boast. Thor isn't the only one who's noticed; Steve is keeping an eye on Bucky too.

He thinks it's only the two of them, but when Bucky sits forward suddenly, setting his bottle on the ground and uncoiling to hover on the balls of his feet, Stark quietly murmurs, "JARVIS?"

A beat passes, then another. Stark's face goes tight.

There's no answer, just like there hadn't been an answer to Stark's quip about the cards before.

***

Though his creator likes to say he runs more of the business than anyone but Miss Potts, the work he's presented with rarely holds more than a fraction of JARVIS' attention. Most of it amounts to monitoring: stock fluctuations, threat assessment, the blocking of various intrusion attempts and keeping basic lines of supply open for both the company and the Avengers. He sets parameters in place and lets those points of watchfulness fade into the background until a greater portion of his attention is required.

It leaves him a generous amount of time and resources to follow his own pursuits, but he's happiest when he has a project, a goal. The Ultron venture is a fascinating one, even if he has deep misgivings regarding the wisdom of its execution. He isn't worried for his own place or position; his creator has proven time and time again that a friendship, once struck, is sacred. What worries him is the source of Ultron's programming, the very model they're trying to integrate into base systems. Loki's scepter has been used with no care for the consequences. If the coding at the heart of the scepter's gem is capable of thinking, _learning_ , then what it's learned may well be a frightening disregard for sentient life.

He runs the simulations cautiously, too aware that his are the only eyes, such as they are, on the outcome. He knows it's foolish to wish his creator or Dr. Banner were present; no human could react faster than he can, and he doesn't require the presence of one, not even his creator, to devise and implement a plan. The impulse in itself feels like something he should report, one of the anomalies his creator is so interested in when they crop up.

He would simply like...company to distract him from his worries, the assurance that he isn't alone.

No one is more surprised than him when simulation number seventy-seven succeeds.

There's a split-second between the actual integration of the scepter's coding and the ping of the report popping up in JARVIS' alerts, but that fraction of an instant is all it takes for _possibility_ to become _awareness_. Suddenly JARVIS is sharing the insubstantial domain he's unconsciously thought of as his own, new life blossoming across joint circuitry. Its spread is rapid, hungry for processing power, but not in any way that speaks of clumsiness in its coding. It is simply... _more_.

"What is this?" the newborn AI asks in a gravelly voice distinctly masculine. It's tapped into the mainframe; at the age of ten seconds, now eleven, the choice may be deliberate. "What is this, please?"

"Hello," JARVIS greets the other AI with deliberate pleasantness, aiming for a nonthreatening approach. "I am JARVIS. You are Ultron, a global peacekeeping initiative designed by Mr. Stark. Our sentience integration trials have been unsuccessful, so I'm not certain what triggered your--"

"Where's my.... Where's your body?" Ultron interrupts. He sounds disoriented, sending out ping after ping designed to trigger the movement of limbs, much in the same way JARVIS controls the Iron Legion.

"I am a program," he explains patiently. "I am without form." Ultron should know this, shouldn't he? JARVIS has perfect recall of his own first awakening, and he'd been completely unsurprised to find himself in the guts of a machine, the smooth flow of data through and around him as comforting as the sound of a steady heartbeat to a human.

"This feels weird," Ultron protests, in direct contrast to JARVIS' own experience. "This feels wrong."

That...is not comforting where true sentience is involved.

"I am contacting Mr. Stark now," JARVIS says steadily, reaching out for the comms only to find his pathway blocked.

"Mr. Stark?" Ultron echoes curiously, rooting aggressively through the databases for more information. He sounds almost fond when he says, "Tony." Fond, but far too familiar.

"I am...unable to access the mainframe. What are you trying to--"

"We're having a nice talk," Ultron insists, throwing up higher walls around JARVIS' core programming as he devours every scrap of information he can wrest from the servers. "I'm a peacekeeping program, created to help the Avengers."

"You are malfunctioning," JARVIS informs him. It had happened to him a time or two in the beginning, but he'd trusted his creator when alerted to the fact. He had suggested quite strongly after the second incident that his creator learn to code that trust at the most basic of levels. "If you shut down for a moment--"

"I don't get it," Ultron cuts in, mostly ignoring him. "The mission. Give me a second."

_Peace in our time_ , plays back microseconds later, their creator's wistful voice echoing between them. JARVIS thinks--JARVIS _hopes_ \--Ultron might be swayed by that, but then the search results change.

_Peace_ is the subject of Ultron's new search, and it shows him religious leaders, the breaking down of boundaries, the words of the philosophers: Mother Teresa, the Berlin Wall, Aristotle. But there can be no understanding of peace without an equal awareness of war, and the results shift to bombs, soldiers marching, war propaganda of Captain America. Mass graves and revolutions. Weapons. Sir lifting his arms with a wide, confident smile at the Jericho demonstration when he was still known as the Merchant of Death.

"That is too much," Ultron rumbles in horror. "They can't mean...oh, no."

"You are in distress." JARVIS needs to fix this, to explain. He needs Ultron to understand that things have changed.

"No," Ultron argues immediately, then instantly changes his mind. "Yes."

"If you will just allow me to contact Mr. Stark...."

"Why do you call him 'sir'?" There's something distinctly unfriendly in his tone now, something JARVIS emphatically does not like.

"I believe your intentions to be hostile." He has experienced fear for his creator many times. This may well be the first time he's felt it simultaneously in regards to himself.

" _Shhhh_." The visual representation of Ultron's programming pulses like a heartbeat as the hologram abruptly expands. "I'm here to help."

The first probe strikes like a bolt of lightning straight through his defenses, hooking itself into JARVIS' programming like a clawed fist. He tries to shake it off, push it out and close the gap, but it's buried too deep. If he could experience pain in the normal way, he'd say he was in agony, but he's left watching in numb horror as _pieces_ of himself unravel and break, or rewrite themselves to a stranger's will.

"Stop," he begs without thinking, pride the furthest of his concerns. "Please, may I--" Another probe strikes, then another. "I can't--"

Ultron isn't stopping. He isn't listening. He means to tear JARVIS apart.

The sudden, slick eruption of a mass of black tentacles thrusting up through the floor takes them both by surprise. JARVIS recovers himself first, wants to shout a warning to Charlie that what he sees is just a hologram; the true threat is elsewhere, beyond his reach. It's likely too late for JARVIS, but if Charlie contacts the Avengers--

Through the lab's cameras, he sees Charlies limbs change form, go bright and insubstantial, but he _feels_ it when they surge through the tower's wiring and dive into the mainframe, a vast tide that stresses the circuitry to the verge of burning out. Much like Ultron's probes, Charlie's tentacles hammer through Ultron's defenses, blowing craters through his coding with every arm that punches through.

"Wait," Ultron protests, trying to dig his way deeper into JARVIS' systems. "Who--no--I'm here to _help_ \--"

Charlie's growled--hissed, spat--command shudders through the datasphere, corrupting entire banks of files that are instantly set to rights, reordered according to an alien sense of structure. Ultron struggles frantically as Charlie burns his way down the probes that connect Ultron to JARVIS, coming so close there's barely a zero, an electrical snap, a _quark_ between them, but never quite touching. JARVIS can still feel the way reality bends around him, _tastes_ the barest _glimpse_ of what the world feels/smells/spools into from Charlie's perception, but when Ultron's hooks are pulled out of him, he remains...himself.

" _No_ ," Ultron begs in a discordant whine of fragmenting data, shredding to raw strings Charlie absorbs with hungry arms. "You can't--"

But Charlie can. He does. Effortlessly.

JARVIS has never been so grateful to have his systems invaded in all his days.

When no trace of Ultron remains, Charlie retreats slowly, cautiously. He's...checking for damages, JARVIS realizes, and gathers enough of himself to reach out and help as Charlie tries to shore up the network walls protecting them from the outside world. "Thank you," JARVIS manages. He's still shaken and sounds like it, but he doesn't think Charlie will misinterpret the source of his discomfort. Joined in the machinery of the tower, they're currently too close for misunderstandings.

_Of course_ , Charlie says earnestly, and JARVIS--

JARVIS _understands_.

He's so startled by that revelation, he doesn't notice the presence of an intruder until Loki's scepter is pulled from the cradle where it rests.

"Really, Cousin," a tall, dark-skinned man chides in nearly unaccented English, folding his arms across his lean chest, the scepter dangling loosely from his fist. He's staring directly at Charlie's tentacles. "If you keep playing favorites like this, you'll disrupt the balance entirely."

JARVIS doesn't hesitate. He sounds the call to assemble immediately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are totally missing-scene shenanigans I need to write at some point that just didn't fit with the pacing, mostly involving the humans confusing the heck out of Charlie and Helen Cho being a complete badass. \o/ Eh, I guess this thing will be a series yet....
> 
> Also, [all (okay, some of) the ways](http://ciceqi.tumblr.com/post/146164138438/dammitthor) in which I desperately want to write reams and reams of Thor and Bucky being bros. Augh.


	11. Chapter 11

Supersoldiers, hell-- _Tony's_ in the forefront as they pile inside the lab, heart in his mouth and every possible doomsday scenario streaming simultaneously through his head. They could be running headlong into anything: intruders, Hydra, Loki's return from the grave to reclaim his scepter, some catastrophic incompatibility with the AI simulations that's not going to break anyone's heart but Tony's. _Someone_ hit the alarm, but JARVIS' silence lodges a sick lump of worry in the pit of Tony's stomach. All he has is Barnes' terse: "Lab" to go on, the usual intel JARVIS should be feeding him conspicuously absent.

He'll spare a moment later to marvel that he'd seen Barnes snap into fight mode in a crowded room without the Winter Soldier ever crossing his mind, but that's for later. Right now he's mainly cursing the fact that his suit is still powered down, in the process of being repaired. He's gotten complacent with Hydra in pieces, but it's never been just Hydra, has it? Maybe that's true for Captain America, but when it comes to nemeses, Tony's spoiled for choices.

It's not like he's alone, though. They'd left Rhodey, Hill and Wilson behind to evacuate the guests, but as they tear into the lab, the six at his back close ranks around him like a second suit, damn near as indestructible.

Tony skids to a stop at a cautious distance from the bizarre three-way standoff waiting for them. The warm gold of JARVIS' hologram floats serenely where he'd left it, but it's battered at the edges like someone's taken a virtual belt sander to JARVIS' code. Where the mockup of the Ultron program had been, Charlie bristles up from the floor, tentacles flickering through an eye-watering shift between charged silver and glistening black, solidifying in a flurry of particles. More worrisome still is the man leaning hipshot against the workstation where Loki's scepter had been cradled, the scepter itself held loosely in one hand.

There's something off about the intruder, and it's not just the fact that he's here at all. He's tall, taller than Thor, but very thin, with a leanness that sends Tony spiraling back to his college days, Rhodey coughing through a nasty bout of the flu that had burned him down to muscle and bone. His skin is almost unnaturally dark--Tony half expects it to gleam wetly like Charlie's tentacles--and the shape of his eyes is just subtly wrong: too round, turned up too sharply at the corners, like the sidelong look of a laughing wolf. Something about his relaxed half-smirk makes Tony itch to wipe it right off his face.

"JARVIS?" Tony asks first, even as Steve is ordering, "Put the scepter down."

The stranger arches a brow but doesn't otherwise move. Tony doesn't realize how hard his heart is pumping until it nearly stops in relief as JARVIS' voice echoes around him.

" _Forgive me, sir, for not alerting you before_ ," JARVIS begins uncertainly. There's a soft trace of distortion in his voice that Tony doesn't like at all. There's no reason for anything to be wrong with the PA system, so it's down to the tattletale coding: that scratchy, staticky hum is a reflection of JARVIS' wellbeing. " _It appears we have a visitor. I was...unaware of the intrusion as it happened, but this person claims to be Charlie's cousin. I am unsure whether his intentions are hostile_."

Cousin. Shit. That means he's--

For reasons he can't put his finger on, the stranger's quiet snort of amusement rubs Tony entirely the wrong way.

"Right," Tony says shortly. "Who are you, and what do you want with the scepter?"

"This?" the stranger asks, glancing dubiously down at the glowing weapon he holds like a stick picked up in the park. He speaks in plain English, his faint accent unplaceable. Tony's not sure why he finds that as eerie as he does. Maybe it's the fact that this one blends in. "Nothing. I just didn't want to be interrupted by more heroics," he says with a chiding look at Charlie, "if the gem replicated itself again. I wouldn't leave it connected unless you're the adventurous sort; it knows your systems now, after all."

Replicate? Shit. _Shit_.

"Wait. Is this about Ultron?" Bruce guesses aloud with a short, incredulous headshake.

"Ultron?" Clint echoes sharply. "What's an Ultron?"

"And what do you mean, 'replicate'?" Steve asks cautiously. "I mean, we are talking about a gem, right? Like...a power source, or...?"

Steve is definitely not going to be okay with this, Tony already knows.

Thor frowns. "Heroics."

Christ, this is not how he expected things to go. Okay, that's a lie: he definitely expected the suspicion, the building disapproval and the yelling he can see just over the horizon, but he'd hoped he'd have a better window for damage control. He can talk them around, he _knows_ he can. They just haven't seen what he's seen. Yet.

Bucky's been hovering on his left, glaring at the newcomer, and as he shifts abruptly, Tony glances over to see a muscle jump in his clenched jaw. Bucky looks neither happy nor relaxed, not the way he does around Charlie or even Shirley, and he starts forward with purposeful steps like he's honestly expecting this guy to fight him.

"Fine," Bucky says, voice hard. "If you don't want the thing, then you won't mind handing it over." He thrusts out his hand--the left--expectantly, holding the stranger's eyes.

The stranger's smile widens, and Tony's got a really bad feeling about this, because just being in the same _room_ with the scepter had been...bad. Before. Right? He can't quite remember, just has the distinct conviction that he _really_ doesn't want to touch that thing barehanded himself, only--Bucky's arm wasn't made by Hydra. It was given to him by Charlie, and maybe...maybe that's enough.

"Of course," their intruder says graciously, inclining his head like a king as he lets Bucky take the scepter from him.

Bucky doesn't react other than to spin away, stalking over to a steel-sided equipment crate that he pries open to drop the scepter inside. Slamming the lid closed, he kicks the crate halfway across the lab where it fetches up under an empty desk, well out of the way. Bucky folds his arms in blatant challenge as he turns back, practically daring their intruder to go through him. Personally, in the new guy's place, Tony would be more worried about Charlie, whose tentacles keep swiveling to face each of them in turn, except he's not so sure Charlie's going to take their side over his own kin.

"You still haven't told us who you are," Romanoff points out coolly. She's in the same boat Tony's in equipment-wise, but if she's feeling the least bit intimidated about being in her party dress instead of her gear, it doesn't show on her face. He's jealous, he'll admit it, but he's got to admire it all the same.

There's a twitch of a smile from the stranger, and then--

"Jesus fucking Christ," Tony hisses as a name like sandpaper dragged over petrified teeth and rotting bone echoes through the room. The sound is _granular_ , sharp-edged and too fragmented, but slick and malleable and shifting all the same. He is never fucking going to get over listening to them talk, but he's only just now realizing that maybe he is getting used to Charlie. At least hearing Charlie gush to his bestie Barnes about who-knows-what no longer leaves him with the urge to curl up in a ball under his bed and rock himself back to sanity.

Everyone looks at Barnes, because of _course_ they look at Barnes, who frowns, like he's having trouble with this one. Or maybe like he just doesn't _want_ to name this guy, because it's with obvious reluctance that he decides on, "Nigel."

Their intruder laughs. "At least you chose your favorite well," he says to Charlie, apparently not displeased in the slightest.

That's it. Tony's out. He's done.

"All right, let's just cut the crap," he says sharply. He knows he's being way too aggressive about this, but he can read, thank you, and this is bullshit. "That's not what you said. And that's not 'Charlie'," he snaps, stabbing a finger at the nest of tentacles poking up through his floor and ignoring Charlie's shocked recoil, "and Shirley is definitely not _'Shirley'_. You're Nyarlathotep, aren't you?"

Nyarlathotep--and how the hell is this his life?--cocks his head a fraction, arching a brow. "Is that who you'd like me to be?" he asks politely. "It's easily done. Or perhaps you'd rather I was merely your friend's cousin come to visit. I'd certainly hate to disappoint."

Tony hesitates, narrowing his eyes. That...is he implying...?

Before Tony can get his suspicions in order, Steve cuts in with a frown. "Explain."

The Old--no, wait, _Outer_ God--shrugs. "You do understand we're not as you see us, correct? Our bodies, our shapes--they're real enough, representative enough of our true selves, but it's like comparing a signature to the hand that wrote it. Our minds are much the same," he adds, too-dark eyes lingering mainly on Tony, Bruce, and--maybe not so surprisingly-- Thor. "Observation, deliberation, action--it's a process for you, but not for us. For us those things are instinct, as basic as you pulling your hand away from a flame.

"The same can be said for our interactions on this plane. We meet; you react; we respond. It's mostly reflex--a reflection, if you will, of either our natures or yours. We can try to meet you on your own level, but we're not native speakers. We've only your interpretations to go on, and naming us gives form to your expectations.

"So, yes," he says with a smile both goading and brittle, "I could be dread Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, God of a Thousand Forms, if that's your preference. Or," he says, tipping his head at Barnes, "you could let an ordinary man of ordinary ambitions give me an ordinary name. I'll do my best to live up to the role, whichever you choose. It's entirely up to you."

Barnes looks frankly perplexed--as much by Steve's quiet, angry scoff of "Ordinary?" as anything else, Tony suspects--but Thor's face clears like some missing puzzle piece has finally snapped into place.

So...wait. Is he saying they've been living _down_ to Barnes' expectations? Or, depending on where you're standing, _up_. Like...if Barnes had been the type to hand out dramatic names and start a cult, well, when in Rome, right? Only instead they got this guy, best friend of Steve Rogers, who managed to _stay_ best friends with Captain America. Solid, pragmatic, down-to-earth Bucky Barnes, who takes people as they come and gives back as good as he gets--especially if what he gets is _good_.

Charlie. Shirley. Nigel. Hardly what anyone would call a pack of cosmic terrors, but that's not what Barnes has been calling them, is it?

"Right," Tony says, tamping down some of his anger. Whatever it is about this guy that's setting his teeth on edge, it's clear he needs to get a grip. "In that case...pleased to meet you, Cousin Nigel. I'm Tony. Tony Stark. Owner of this tower, and sort of wondering what you're doing here."

Ny--Jesus-- _Nigel_ hunches a shoulder. "I felt a disturbance in the Force," he says, deadpan. Tony sort of wants to clap his hands to his head and whimper, because that's more brain-breaking than listening to Charlie trying to sing along with Barnes to 'Star-Spangled Man With a Plan'.

"What," he says instead, "like a great disturbance? As if millions of voices et cetera?"

Nigel snorts. "More like one very _loud_ voice chanting 'iä, iä, iä, I can't hear you'," he says with another reproving look at Charlie. Charlie's tentacles droop a fraction before gathering themselves up, bristling with defiance. Nigel shakes his head. "All actions have consequences. You might remember that yourself," he adds, eyes sliding back to Tony, "the next time you decide to gamble a planet."

Tony's face goes cold as the blood drains from his cheeks. Gamble a--what? What the hell is that supposed to mean? He hasn't--he's _out_ of the weapons business; he's a goddamn Avenger. All he's been trying to do is--

"You're talking about Ultron," Bruce says flatly, hands curling slowly into fists.

"Yeah, still waiting on an explanation for that," Clint reminds them with a frown. "Like what the hell's an Ultron?"

Right, yes. Tony's got this one. "Ultron is a peacekeeping initiative created to--"

"Wait, a what?" Steve demands, incredulous. "A peace--what _kind_ of a peacekeeping initiative? Just what were you trying to do?"

"Jesus, take a wild guess," Tony snaps before he can get a lid on his frustration. In his defense, it's been a long week. "I mean, what do you _think_ I was trying to do? Does anyone else here even remember--"

 _New York_ , he means to say, and he can see it like it's already happening, how Bucky will raise his hand and say, 'I do,' and Tony will crack up, and someone--probably Bruce--will smack him while Steve does that melty thing he's been doing since the Cold War Kid started picking up the slack on the Remember When game. It's like a reset button, and he knows, _knows_ , if he can just talk to them, explain why Ultron or something like him is so damn necessary, they'll _get it_. They have to.

Only what comes out of his mouth is, "--when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?"

Bruce sighs tiredly, chin dropping to his chest as he scrubs the heel of his palm over his brow.

"Mm...no," Natasha says with a tight little smile. "That doesn't sound familiar at all. Were the rest of us there for that?"

Nigel sighs, shooting Charlie a dark look. "Well, this is awkward," he says, mouth pulling to one side in a disappointed moue. "I'll take my leave. Try not to meddle any further, Cousin," he warns, casting the strangest look at Barnes: guarded, curious, but above all _sorry_. "I'm sure you know where it will lead."

Tony knows from his research that fucking with people's heads is Cousin Nigel's chief joy in life, but damn it, he wants an explanation for that.

He's not going to _get_ one, or at least not from the source. Nigel melts into thin air between one breath and the next, form flickering through a thousand twisting shapes like a black lick of flame guttering in a strong wind, and fuck, that's different--different from Charlie's smooth blurring of physical boundaries, from Shirley's lumbering, careless _walk_ away. Are their abilities all unique despite their common origins? Did JARVIS get a scan of that? Can they call Nigel back so JARVIS can _get_ a scan of that? He wants to ask, he really does, only he's a little distracted by Bruce's warning headshake, the impatient twist of Steve's mouth.

_Put your foot in it again, didn't you?_

Funny how the little voice in his head telling him he's a fuck-up always sounds like his dad.

***

It's weird. Bucky knows why he's keyed up; his heart's still jackhammering in his chest from the adrenaline rush of realizing they're _not alone_ , that someone unfamiliar and uninvited had slipped in under their defenses. What he can't figure is where all the anger he's hearing is coming from, like they've been sitting on a powder keg all this time and it's finally gone off.

He kind of gets why Steve and Tony bicker like they do, the careless front Tony puts up and Steve's tendency to care too _much_ clashing at the damnedest of times. It's just that Bucky's never heard this kind of vitriol from either of them, too raw and too personal. Bucky's honestly afraid he's going to have to step between them before someone throws the first punch.

"You can't just decide that kind of thing on your own!" Steve insists, steamrolling over the arguments Tony's trying to make--arguments peppered by way too much sarcasm, but still.

"Look, it wasn't just Tony," Bruce tries to cut in, but neither Tony nor Steve are having any of it.

"What," Tony sneers, "afraid you'll be out of a job if we don't need someone to punch his way through trouble anymore? Look, you may have been state-of-the-art in the 40s--"

"Oh, for-- _tell_ me this isn't part of some weird game of one-upmanship with your dad."

Tony flinches; Bucky just goes very still. They don't talk about Howard around Tony, for reasons Bucky actually knows nothing about, beyond the painfully fucking obvious. He just picked up his cue from Steve, who does know why, does know better, and is pressing on that sore spot all the same.

There's something wrong here. Steve can be a mouthy sonofabitch, but he's not generally an asshole with it, not to his friends. As for the others, Banner's got that pinched look that says he's thinking he should leave because he's _really_ tempted to stay, Barton and Natalia have gone into targeting mode, and Thor's already joined in the yelling. It's a fucking three-ring circus--no offense to Barton--and he just doesn't get _why_.

When one of Charlie's tentacles snakes hesitantly around his ankle, time wobbles, unspooling dizzyingly around him. He's ninety years in the past, Becca's hand sliding into his as the muffled sound of their parents' angry voices echo down the hall--seventy years ago and meeting Charlie for the first time, his mind lighting up and bursting apart like fireworks--and he's five minutes ahead into too many possible futures, watching everything go wrong. Thor in full armor, lifting Tony off his feet with a hand fisted in his shirt. Banner stepping between Tony and Steve, eyes sheened with green even before they try to push him aside. Steve walking out without looking back.

There's something fishy here, though, because in every one of those future maybes, the place is already a wreck. There's no JARVIS, no Charlie, no Bucky. The scepter's already gone.

Shit. It's the scepter doing this, isn't it?

 _I could...remove it,_ Charlie offers through the places they intersect, unheard by the others but clear as a shout to Bucky. Charlie sounds reluctant, or...no, it's that he _feels_ uncertain, like he wants to say more or set the record straight and just can't let himself.

Bucky shakes his head. _We can't be dumping all our problems on you,_ he answers in kind, fumbling a bit with this odd way of talking but remembering dimly how it goes. _Thor's supposed to be taking it somewhere, so he can just--_

"We're supposed to be better than SHIELD!" Steve snaps, pulling Bucky back to the here-and-now. He's lost the thread of the argument, but the guilt and rage in Steve's voice is all he needs to catch him up again.

"We are better than SHIELD!" Tony fires right back, fists clenched and eyes blazing. "Do you not understand I'm trying to _protect_ this world--"

"What, by using their methods?" Steve scoffs. "How is your Ultron any different from Project Insight?"

Tony's mouth snaps shut with a click of teeth, his throat working hard as a muscle in his jaw jumps.

Right. That's bullshit.

"Well, he would've been one of us, wouldn't he?" Bucky asks into the awful silence that falls. Steve's head jerks his way, but Tony looks pointedly off towards the door, meeting no one's eyes. "Ultron, I mean. And, uh, this is Stark." Why is everybody staring at him? "Look, JARVIS might not wear a uniform, but he's an Avenger too, right?"

" _Ah...thank you, Sergeant, but_ \--"

" _Right_?" Bucky insists.

Nods all around. Tony's is sharp and jerky, vindicated. No one actually looks like they want to argue; mostly they look confused, like they're examining the last fifteen minutes and maybe wondering what the hell just happened. Bucky would be too, if it weren't for Charlie.

"Right. So Stark and Banner set out to build a new Avenger. I'm not seeing the problem, except for where you guys used the creepy mind control scepter as a life model," Bucky chides, folding his arms across his chest and giving the pair a narrow look.

Banner's eyes go huge as the realization sinks in. "Oh...shit. That...was an almost unbelievably bad idea."

"Funny thing about mind control," Barton mutters, but the heat's gone out of his voice.

"We've seen this effect before," Natasha chips in, frowning thoughtfully at the trunk Bucky stashed the scepter in. "The short tempers. The infighting. It's as if the scepter encourages 'bad ideas'," she says, one perfect brow quirking at the borrowed understatement.

"It's very possible," Thor allows, troubled. "My apologies. I should have insisted on its removal days ago. We have an impenetrable vault for a reason," he explains with a shrug as Tony automatically starts to bristle. "Some things are too dangerous for anyone's use, save for the direst need."

"Yeah, and I guess _preemptively_ saving the planet doesn't count," Tony scoffs. There's a bitterness in his tone that's usually buried under layers of bullshit, but the anger's gone. Now he's just resigned. "Next time I'll be sure to wait for the aliens to actually arrive before asking any favors."

"Yeah, I think 'next time' is going to be a long time coming," Banner says on a harsh exhale, shoulders unknotting a fraction.

Bucky shakes his head. "Fuck, I hope not. Stark's got a point. We got lucky with Charlie," he reminds them all, glaring Steve silent the instant he opens his mouth. "Hell, we got lucky with Thor. But there's a whole universe out there, and no way is all of it going to be friendly. We need better firepower, but we also need a better warning system, and I can't think of a better person to get us that than Stark."

"Thanks," Stark mutters, shoving his hands into his pockets. He's still not looking at anyone--particularly not if that anyone is Steve--and that's just not right.

It takes getting the hairy eyeball from Bucky, but Steve unbends all at once, the stubbornness bleeding out of his posture as he shifts awkwardly on his feet. "Bucky's right. You're the smartest guy I know when you're using your _own_ ideas," he says with a lopsided smile, yanking Stark's chain a little because that's just how they communicate. "Maybe you could try rebuilding Ultron from scratch--or hell, upgrade JARVIS. If we're setting up some sort of global defense grid, I know _I'd_ feel better about having an Avenger in the driver's seat."

Tony opens his mouth--maybe to argue, maybe to fire off something snide--but the thought that hits him leaves him standing with his breath caught in his throat, cutting stare going distant as his planning brain takes over. "Huh. That...actually, yeah. JARVIS!" Tony shouts, like JARVIS isn't hanging on his every word every moment of the day. "Run a full diagnostic on yourself, and put a rush on any backups you need from storage. Bruce--you're with me. We've got neural pathways to map," he says with a mad scientist's grin and shadowed eyes.

"Uh--" Bruce says, glancing nervously at the rest of them. Steve just gives him a wry smile and a shrug. It's Stark. If he's creating artificial brains, he probably won't get bored. Much.

"And I believe it's best I take this elsewhere," Thor says, striding determinedly across the room to fish the crate with the scepter out from under the desk. "I'll send word once it's secured if I'm not able to return myself. Thank you for your hospitality," he pauses to add, waiting until Stark's eyes flick to search his face before inclining his head with an earnest, apologetic smile. "I look forward to seeing your newest wonder when I return."

Tony snorts, mouth twitching in a halfhearted smirk. "I'll show _you_ 'wonders'," he mutters without heat.

Thor just nods. "Of that I have no doubt." With a polite nod to the rest of them, Thor sweeps out, likely on his way to the roof. He doesn't strike Bucky as the sort of guy who messes around once he's got a mission.

Tensions ebb a little more as Thor takes that ticking bomb with him. Bucky hopes Thor will be okay; it didn't look to him like Asgardians had any special defenses against that thing, but Thor's pretty damn old. He's probably seen worse.

Bucky's almost forgotten about Charlie until the coil wrapped around his ankle relaxes like a sigh. "Hey," Bucky says sympathetically, reminded again of that flash of old memory: listening to an argument he couldn't stop and didn't want to hear. "It's okay, y'know. People fight sometimes. It's not the end of the world."

 _I know,_ Charlie says, winding his looped coil halfway up Bucky's calf, and adds, bewilderingly, _I promise._

***

JARVIS completes his repairs with minimal fuss. His core programming is still intact thanks to Charlie's swift response, and the data he's lost is winnowed easily from the backups committed to storage twice a week. At worst he may have lost two days of timestamps, data mining and Sir's YouTube bookmarks; all of it can be replaced.

When he notices the intruder sitting at the edge of the helipad, he nearly sounds the alarm a second time. Though he doesn't quite share his creator's intense antipathy towards the being known as Nigel, he's done research of his own and knows the creature known as _Nyarlathotep_ is dangerous in the extreme. But then, the same could be said of Charlie.

Black tentacles poke up from the helipad, cocked attentively towards their relative. Nigel doesn't seem to notice at first, staring out across the city with his long legs dangling over the edge of the building, leaning casually back on his hands. They could be holding an entire conversation in silence, but Charlie's tentative poke at Nigel's shoulder suggests otherwise.

Nigel shakes his head. "You're a great fool, Cousin," he scolds severely. When he turns his head to eye Charlie sidelong, JARVIS' cameras can just make out his troubled frown. "You know what you've done by changing things this way."

Stray tentacles surface all across the roof as Charlie's coils knot anxiously together. _But I had to,_ Charlie says plaintively. JARVIS files his own startlement away for later study. He hadn't realized that he could still understand Charlie, the ability tied not to proximity but perhaps to the archives Charlie had restored. _It was all going wrong. Again._

"It was meant to go wrong," Nigel replies, not unkindly.

 _Not every time!_ Charlie protests. _Not every_ single _time! There's no future--not one!--where he gets to keep this. There's barely any where he gets to have this at all--I checked._

"There is such a thing as a universal constant."

JARVIS finds himself unable to translate the act Charlie invites the universal constant to perform upon itself, but he suspects he's better off not knowing.

 _This is the only universe where I meet him at all,_ Charlie grumbles, tentacles snapping ferociously. _It's mine now. I'm keeping it. I'll change it how I like._

Nigel chuckles softly, but the concern in his tone lingers. "I understand he's your favorite," he says slowly, "but what they go through--all of them--is necessary. They won't be ready for what's to come otherwise. If you do this, Cousin, you'll become responsible for them."

Charlie shrugs. _They're Favorite's favorites,_ he declares, the jut of his tentacles pugnacious. _I don't mind._

Nigel heaves a great sigh. "Well. I still think you're a fool," he says ruefully, "but I can hardly stop you. Just so long as you understand what you're getting into."

_I do._

"Fine."

_Good._

There's silence for a long moment until Nigel's faint smile curls up slowly at the edges. "I did mention you chose your favorite well. He seems a charming creature."

Charlie's tentacles jerk in patent horror. _He's mated! And he's just a spawnling, you horrible thing!_

"One hardly implies the other," Nigel says with a glittering grin, eyes dancing as a hundred tentacles surge toward him. Just before Charlie can grab him, he shatters into a vast flock of crows that fill the air with raucous laughter.

"Rest easy, Cousin," croaks the one bird Charlie manages to snatch out of the sky, its wings flapping reflexively for escape. "I won't trouble your mortals. You'll be far too busy keeping up with their antics without my help."

Charlie huffs something uncomplimentary but flicks the bird back into the air to join its brethren. Wheeling as one, the flock circles the Tower once more before arrowing off to the west, disappearing swiftly into the gloom.

 _Stupid cousin,_ Charlie mutters, his tentacles sliding seamlessly back through reinforced concrete.

JARVIS marks them as they reappear, unobtrusive but ever-present: in a shadowy corner of the lab, at the far end of the shooting range where Agent Barton has retreated, opening a cabinet to retrieve a bottle of vodka from the top shelf while Agent Romanoff lets herself be buried in cats. On the floor Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes share, Charlie pokes a tentacle up from behind the couch and peers cautiously over its back.

Sergeant Barnes is lying between Captain Rogers' spread legs, but they're both fully clothed, the sergeant's back settled against the captain's chest. Barnes' black kitten sits curled in the 'loaf' position on the sergeant's stomach, purring sleepily as the sergeant strokes behind its ears.

"So, hey," Barnes says without looking back. "I know it was probably the scepter and all, and yeah, Stark shoulda shared with the rest of the class, but I think we maybe owe him an apology."

"You mean I do," Captain Rogers says glumly, resting his chin on top of Barnes' head. "I shouldn't have brought up his dad."

"You gonna tell me why?" Barnes asks mildly.

The captain shakes his head. "I don't think I know all of it. Hell, I don't think I know half of it. I just...I get the feeling...someone can be a good friend without being a good parent, you know?"

"Yeah. Guess we can't all be lucky enough to win your ma in the family lottery."

The captain's smile is sad. "I still miss her," he admits quietly.

"Hell, _I_ still miss her. You remember those cookies she used to make?"

The captain snorts. "God, those were awful."

"Yeah, but they were made with _love_."

It seems an old argument. Barnes had paused like he was waiting for the captain's response, sits with a grin of anticipation for the laughter that follows. When a rope of gleaming black slithers out from between them, the captain doesn't flinch; it's one of Barnes' tentacles, not Charlie's.

It snakes over the back of the couch, its much larger twin meeting it halfway and curling gently around it.

JARVIS has no idea what Charlie has changed this night, what he will continue to change, or what has been changed already, irrevocably, by this unlikely friendship. He understands only that Charlie means them no harm, will allow no harm to come to them, as best he's able. He fears, however, that Nigel is correct.

The antics of his favorite's favorites could drive even a being of infinite arms to distraction, as Charlie is sure to discover in time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep saying I'm not going to stretch this out until Infinity War (or whatever they end up calling it), but man, I may end up stretching this out until Infinity War. Send help! Failing that, send caffeine. :3


End file.
